Recruitment declined by 6% in South Africa’s tech sector in August, September and October, as companies slowed down hiring activity amid the economic downturn.
This is according to the latest CareerJunction Employment Insights, which provides an analysis of the supply and demand trends in the online job market, from data gathered from Saongroup South Africa, which works with over 5 000 of SA’s top recruiters.
The findings serve as a foundation for potential HR solutions and strategies, enabling businesses and recruitment agencies to focus on relevant occupations when developing their talent attraction and retention strategies, says CareerJunction.
According to the report, despite the growing demand for IT skills, the sector is listed among the three sectors that saw a dip in hiring activity in August, September and October.
“When comparing hiring activity over August, September and October with the previous three months (May, June and July), there is a decline in recruitment for admin, office and support, IT, business and management professionals. In IT, the software development vertical showed the lowest level of recruitment.”
The decline in hiring activity was driven by a slowdown in recruitment across these sectors, due to the economic downturn, as firms curb their hiring endeavours. Other companies are pausing on hiring activity as they wind down for the year, with plans to resume recruitment activities in the new year, it says.
The shift in IT hiring comes as the world’s biggest technology companies freeze hiring as they implement large-scale retrenchments.
Organisations in the sector have been announcing large-scale job cuts since the last quarter of 2022. These include the likes of multinationals Amazon, Google, Meta, Google parent company Alphabet, Salesforce, X (formerly Twitter), Spotify, IBM, SAP, Microsoft and Cisco.
There is still a huge demand for IT skills across SA, with software developers, programmer analysts and developer programmers being on the national critical skills list.
Providing an analysis of IT skills demand by province, CareerJunction says: “Software development professionals are in very high demand in Gauteng and the Western Cape, and in high demand in KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape, while database design / development / administration professionals are in high demand in Gauteng and in medium demand in the Western Cape. However, the latter skills are not on the critical skills list.”
Systems analysis professionals are in high demand in Gauteng and in medium demand in the Western Cape. Technical / business architecture professionals are in high demand in Gauteng and in medium demand in the Western Cape, notes the report.
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