By RICHARD PAMATATAU
Job-seekers with IT skills may find plenty of opportunity for work if the optimism of TMP Hudson Global Resources' employment survey materialises into paying positions.
The international headhunting and job-broking outfit has published its Hudson Report, which shows business employment optimism at a five-year high.
The IT sector records
a 15.5 per cent increase in job confidence, placing it second behind the construction, property and engineering group, which is benefiting from the housing boom.
Ben Pearson, national manager for technology recruitment at TMP Hudson, said optimism was higher than during the Y2K and dotcom boom eras.
He did not know how many people work in IT and would not reveal how many jobs his company has on its books, because it was confidential information, he said.
The Ministry of Economic Development says there were 45,460 IT positions in New Zealand last June, an rise of 10,758 since 1988.
This figure was arrived at from Statistics New Zealand material.
The figures show that computer consultancy services are now the single largest employment area, rising from 2409 in 1988 to 18,000 last year.
On the other hand, the period since 1989 has seen a steady decline in numbers employed in telecommunication services, from 19,028 in 1989 to 9020 last year.
IT positions are also available outside the industry, giving a total of 57,249 people in IT occupations in 2001, a 70 per cent rise since the 1996 Census.
In 2001, 4.7 per cent (up from 4 per cent in 1996) of the working population in New Zealand was in an IT occupation and/or working for an IT industry company, according to the ministry.
Pearson said many companies were looking to increase their use of information systems and needed good staff,
But they were becoming much more specific and that meant good people sometimes did not make it past the mark.
Pearson said a number of New Zealand companies had won contract work for overseas customers, which meant more jobs would be available next year.
The largest increase in jobs in the general IT sector was in electronics, where the manufacture of communications and navigational equipment had attracted people with skills in programming for embedded devices, computer-aided design and the Windows CE operating system.
