Number of vacancies at Jobs.cz drops 3% in 2012

Prague, Jan 14 (CTK) - The situation on the Czech labour market worsened last year as employers advertised 162,212 vacancies through the Jobs.cz portal during 2012, a drop of 3 percent compared with 2011, according to statistics of company LMC operating the portal.

"The development on the labour market last year was influenced by a number of negative impulses that gradually led to lay-offs in some companies and institutions, and to slower creation of new jobs in all segments as of March 2012," LMC's analyst Tomas Dombrovsky said commenting on the data.

School-leavers and graduates faced a drop of relevant work opportunities in the course of 2012. Employers advertised 18,770 vacancies for school-leavers and graduates on the Jobs.cz portal last year, a year-on-year decrease of 14 percent.

The number of advertised vacancies requiring cooperation based on a trade licence declined by 21 percent year-on-year to 7,672 in 2012.

The labour market is still dominated by full-time work which was required by employers in 105,000 vacancy advertisements last year. However, the number of full-time jobs offered at Jobs.cz fell by 6 percent year-on-year. In contrast, the number of offered part-time jobs grew by 8.5 percent on the year to 5,058 last year.

The drop in the number of full-time jobs was to a certain extent compensated by seasonal jobs and temporary employment. The number of such jobs offered at Jobs.cz increased by 4 percent year-on-year to 52,451 last year.

Increasing competition among job applicants led to a shortening of the period of time needed to fill some positions. Besides, employers compensated the drop of part of regular recruitment by a higher number of seasonal and temporary jobs, Dombrovsky said.

The chart of sectors in which employers offered the highest number of new vacancies was topped by sale and trade with a 13.5 percent share. Administration work came second with a 7.3 percent share, followed by the engineering sector with 6.7 percent and manufacture and industry with 6.1 percent.

A growth in the number of vacancies was registered mainly in the IT segment, with demand in this sector exceeding 15 percent.

"It is worth noticing that companies last year continued to have big problems when recruiting employees for technical jobs, especially in the IT and engineering sectors, despite a growing number of jobless people," Dombrovsky said.

This is a long-term problem that will become even more acute if the economy recovers, Dombrovsky added.