The September Simplify.hr Job Trends Report shows that there has been recovery from the devastating impact of the lockdown on the job market in South Africa

The September Simplify.hr Job Trends Report shows that there has been recovery from the devastating impact of the lockdown on the job market in South Africa, but South Africa is still showing significantly lower levels of activity compared with the previous year. Simplify.hr, conducts a monthly report of online job posting activity to measure the state of the South African jobs market.

September followed the trend of August, seeing another 7% increase in the number of jobs advertised online compared the previous month, with most sectors seeing some growth. The sectors hardest hit by the lockdown continue to show some recovery, with the largest increases in jobs listed seen in Hospitality & Catering (+29%), Retail (+22%), Leisure & Tourism (+17%), Education (+16%) and Marketing & Media (+16%). The Social & Civil Services sector, which saw a 175% rise in listings in August saw a 48% reduction of jobs advertised in September. Other notable declines were seen in the Customer Service sector which saw a 9% month on month decline in listings. The most in-demand sectors for jobs for September remained in the Finance, IT & Telecoms and Engineering sectors.

On a more sobering note of the state of the economy and the jobs market, job stock volumes for September were 26% below the same period last year, but a slight improvement compared with the August’s 30% decline compared with the previous year. Surprisingly the IT & Telecoms sector, which is one of the largest contributors to job opportunities online was 52% down year on year in September. Other hard-hit sectors unsurprisingly are Leisure & Tourism down 52% year on year and Hospitality & Catering which is 45% down. The Health sector once again saw a year on year growth, growing 41%, driven by the ongoing need to respond to the current pandemic. The related sector of Science & Research also saw a 7% year on year growth. Of the 22 sectors measured, only five have seen yearly growth.

Marc Privett, the General Manager of Simplify.hr and Careers24.com says “While there are promising signs that we are continuing our slow recovery from the lockdown, it is clear that there is a startling and rapidly rising gap between the number of jobs available and number of people finding themselves in the job market. It is a buyer’s market at the moment, with those who are advertising getting larger numbers of responses per ad, driven by larger numbers of jobseekers turning to job boards and company career sites to find employment. It remains to be seen if we will continue to see growth in job opportunities online as we start getting closer to the end of the year where traditionally job advertising activity slows down.”

Simplify.hr helps companies find top talent through Careers24.com, one of South Africa’s leading job boards, as well as effectively manage their recruitment efforts from planning, to sourcing all the way to onboarding through the Simplify.hr recruitment management platform to make more effective hires, faster.

Simplify.hr is a proud member of the Media24 family, so we are South African first. Leveraging the power of online platforms to uplift audiences is in our DNA.