The number of jobs registered with Collins McNicholas, the national Recruitment and HR Services Group, increased by 24% in the first two months of this year, in comparison with the same period from the previous year.
According to Michelle Murphy, Regional Manager at Collins McNicholas, Galway, the increase in the number of jobs registered with Collins McNicholas since the beginning of 2013 is a positive sign that the job market is improving.
“These new vacancies are largely being generated by the multinational companies in Ireland; most notably within the international services, ICT, pharmaceutical and medical technology sectors, with these sectors increasing their FDI through the recessionary period.
Although Collins McNicholas does not anticipate a dramatic reduction in the current unemployment rate of 14.1 percent, we do believe that we will begin to see a slow but steady decrease over the next two years. Recent figures from the CSO are in line with our own experience, with their year-end figures showing an increase in the total number of people in employment for the first time since the recession began in 2008.”
There have been a number of notable successes in the area of job creation since the beginning of the year. In the last two weeks there have been major job announcements in the ICT sector from Qauntcast and Facebook, with 100 jobs being created by each company. EBay also announced the creation of 450 jobs in its Dundalk facility, as part of its planned EMEA centre. Vistakon, the manufacturer of the Acuvue range of contact lenses, also announced the creation of 100 additional high skilled positions at its Limerick plant. Huawei, the global ICT solutions provider revealed its plans to create 50 high skilled positions at its Cork and Dublin facilities.
Michelle Murphy, commenting on the recent growth in IT vacancies said; “there are over 74,000 people working in the ICT sector, representing 4 per cent of the total workforce. It is the fastest growing sector in the economy, with an estimated 3,500 - 4,500 vacancies in this sector currently. As a country, our ability to produce technology professionals over the next five years will dictate how successful we are in building the ICT sector”.
Here in the West of Ireland a number of manufacturing companies are beginning to ramp up on the back of new product introductions with a range of products coming through from the very active research and development divisions within these companies. Collins McNicholas anticipates an increased demand for engineering personnel across a range of disciplines including quality engineering, manufacturing and research and development engineering opportunities over the next 3 to 6 months.
The introduction of new products will also lead to increased demand for production personnel possibly on temporary or contract arrangements initially during the ramp-up period but ideally the companies will decide to take on the employees permanently me soon afterwards.
