More than 3,000 companies were surveyed on their latest employment activities and plans for 2009. Company directors, senior managers and hr executives representing a wide cross-section of industries and sizes responded to the survey carried out by the Jobs Online Group Ltd publishers of 4 niche sites AccountantJobs.ie, SalesJobs.ie, ComputerJobs.ie and AdminJobs.ie.
Confidence in the market
Overall 21% believe the economy will start to improve in 6-12 months
The majority 55% of respondents expect it to take longer in 1-2 years
20% giving it more 3-4 years to correct itself!
Sales Directors show the most faith in the recession lifting with 36% answering in under 6-12 months. Let’s hope they are right.
Recession Proof
No industry is recession proof according to 63% of respondents. But suggestions of funeral directors, liquidators, pizza parlours, and gambling business’s all seem a safe bet of suggested industries to be in.
Employment Plans
We asked what are their employment plans for the next 12 months?
- 5% have plans to let staff go
- 33% will replace staff that leave
- 28% plan non-replacement of staff that leave
- The highest with 34% having plans to increase staff over the next 12 months.
Both the IT and sales industry sectors had the highest percentage of plans to increase staff over the next 12 months.
Redundancies – More to come
Over a quarter of respondents to the survey have already made staff redundancies in 2008. 86% of companies that have already made redundancies this year are planning more job cuts in the next 12 months.
The IT sector seems to be the least affected industry with 80% of those in the IT sector stating no redundancies in place to date.
Lessons From the 80’s
Lessons learnt from the last recession in the 1980’s seem to be holding firm, whereby companies that consistently advertised throughout the 80’s recession were seen to increase business by 30% once productivity returned to the market.
Advertising was highest on the list least likely to cut back spending on.
Profit Opportunities in 2009
Not surprising the IT sector was the only industry to favour increasing in new technology as a preferred method to increase profits for 2009.
It’s good news for Marketing, historically known as the first industry to cut back on when budget cuts come in to play, but our respondents named Marketing as the category most likely to increase spend with to increase profit opportunities in 2009.
Recruitment advertising in newsprint may take a further blow as 63% of companies surveyed have no plans to advertise in newsprint in 2009.
Niall Kelly, of the Jobs Online Group which conducted the research, believes “while the downturn has been coming throughout 2008 for larger companies, it has only really hit small /medium business's hard since October. I am confident SME's will be at the frontline when it comes to a lift in business confidence and see a perfect combination of lower interest rates, lower oil prices, better regulation of the financial sector and increased govt backed loans to mortgage holders, along with the "Obama bounce" - that business activity will lift just as quickly in 2009.
