Employers in Poland published in May. 261,000 job offers – i.e. 15% less y/y and 2% less m/m, according to a report by Grant Thornton. The situation on the labour market is stabilising, but it is a very slow phenomenon; the three-month average annual dynamics (cleared of one-off, monthly fluctuations) showed that declines decreased from 14% to 12%.
“The number of job offers in May was disappointing. Not only was it clearly (15%) lower than a year ago, but it was also 2% lower than April. This is worrying, as usually in these months the number of offers increases. This is because there is an increase in seasonal work, for example in catering, tourism or agriculture. This time, this seasonal ‘wave’ has not carried the labour market. It is comforting to know that our data is characterised by a fair amount of inter-month variability, so perhaps May was only a temporary fluctuation and the long-term trend is still positive. We will find out in the coming months,” Grant Thornton payroll and HR outsourcing partner Magdalena Marcinowska commented, quoted in the report.
The study pointed out that ‘the declines in job vacancies are still significant and positive readings are still a long way off’; furthermore, ‘there is, however, hope for them from our macroeconomic forecasts, according to which the annual dynamics of employment in the corporate sector in the second half of the year will come out to the positive after the recent negative dynamics’.
In May, the largest year-on-year decline in job vacancies was in the IT sector, with employers posting 44% fewer vacancies year-on-year. The decline is evident among HR professionals (-30%) and among finance professionals (-28%), Grant Thornton reported.
An increase in the dynamics of offers in May was recorded only among announcements for manual workers (6% y/y).
As in April, May also saw around 5.5 requirements per ad placed by employers for candidates. The most common requirements are experience and education, the report further reads.
The survey was conducted among real job offers published on the 50 largest portals during the period under study. Data was collected using an automatic job offer monitoring tool developed by Element. Part of the survey was a quantitative analysis of the content of job offers conducted on a random sample of 1,000 new offers published on Pracuj.pl and OLX.pl.
Source: Grant Thornton