Market Update for the IT industry – Summer 2023

General Market Update:

Welcome to our fourth quarter jobs market update and review of 2023 and the year that was. We hope you’ve had a truly successful year and are looking forward to some downtime across Christmas and New Year.

Skip to: * Hot Jobs * What’s happening at Sourced * Skills in demand right now * Overview *

The Sourced team called time on this year from Thursday 21st Dec, with our offices reopening on January 8th. We plan for some well-earned rest, beach/lake time and a refresh before the new year is upon us.

Reviewing the year in its entirety in this report, we have included what’s trending, who’s in demand, who’s moving and a general overview of the market. We hope this is useful as an update to our TechShapers report which came out in September. As always, we encourage you to contact us if you’re looking for any specific market intelligence. We’re in a unique position to watch the market as it evolves and are always happy to share these insights.

General Comments

2023 has been a wholly different year to 2022, with a bit more calm prevailing. It has by no means been a softened tech recruitment market, just a plateauing in what were rocketing salary levels, with a tempered hiring demand from clients and more consideration from candidates when looking to make their next career step. These conditions have been a lot more rewarding for us to work in, and we feel like we’ve made some great matches this year, from both offshore and nationally 

The year started with a bang, with a continuation of the 2022 recruitment surge for permanent resources (as noted in our Autumn Market Update, however, this quickly settled into a steady rhythm that continued throughout the year and saw recruitment split fairly evenly between demand for contract and permanent employees.

From mid-year onwards

By mid-year, we were experiencing a dramatic uptick in demand for contract resources, particularly around transformation – Business Analysts, Change Managers and Project Support resources being at the front of this wave. This continued through until the end of the 3rd quarter, where we saw a noticeable drop off for the remaining 3 months of the year. For the first time in many years, we saw a large number of experienced BA’s on the bench, trying to secure project work ahead of the dreaded Christmas lock-out period. While we expect this to resurrect itself in 2024, it’s certainly been tougher than usual conditions for contractors as we close out 2023.

While contract demand dropped off, permanent demand remained steady, and as we look ahead into 2024, we expect this to continue at about the same cadence.

Generally speaking, resourcing has continued to present a real challenge to meet the demands of our clients’ growth across the year, particularly on the back of so many job changes happening in 2023 and therefore fewer active candidates locally. Many of our clients have opened up their teams to remote and WFH workers, which has helped in the higher-skilled areas (Cloud and Solution Architecture being prime examples).

The opening of international borders and greater availability of visa options for international candidates have also gone a long way in helping to meet the growth demands of our local clients, and in equal measure has helped with the plateauing in salary levels. Looking ahead to 2024 we expect these international migration numbers to increase, which ensures the tech industry will to continue to grow.

Who is in Demand?

2023 has been a very strong year for IT Support, Infrastructure, Cloud and DevOps with demand remaining strong across the year at all levels. This has been on the back of a lot of project work transitioning to Cloud, wrapping more support around internal users on the back of large ERP/application deployments, and MSP providers experiencing strong growth.

Traditional Software Development/QA Test roles have been in lesser demand this year, with a lot of that recruitment happening in 2022, and less growth meaning less demand. Where demand has existed it has tended to be more targeted towards .Net/Microsoft technologies, Cloud and Web, and more towards the Senior level than Junior to Intermediate. Anecdotally, businesses are moving away from in-house QA so it will interesting to see how that gap is filled.

Demand in the Transformation – PM/BA/Change/Project Support – space has remained high across the year in both the Permanent and Contract spaces, with the dip only really coming in the last quarter of this year, when economic conditions tightened. We do see this as a dip only, and on the whole feel that business confidence has remained reasonably high given talk of the economy and change in government. Change Management has been a real hero this year, with this important discipline finally starting to take centre stage and be rolled into Programme Delivery planning and execution. While previously Change was often tacked on to the end of Project Management it is now being recognised in its own right and honed as a professional discipline.

In this Transformation space, both Auckland and South Island markets have benefitted from a dramatic pause in contractor recruitment in Wellington on the back of the National government moving into power. We now have several Wellington contractors working with us on projects in other centres, and their experience is proving highly beneficial for clients, particularly in bringing in new disciplines, certifications, and experience that may have been scarcer in other markets.

R&D, Electronics and Manufacturing have been a quieter than usual space for Sourced over 2023, with solid demand through the earlier months of the year, but then falling away.

When we compare Auckland and Christchurch markets, certainly Christchurch appears to have held a lot more buoyancy over Auckland in both contract and permanent recruitment markets, with far fewer redundancy and right-sizing exercises happening in the South.

Market Update General Round-Up

In both Auckland and Canterbury, Jobseekers have not been nearly as active as they were in 2022. They are, however, very aware of the demand levels for their skills and are increasingly marking themselves as ‘open for the right move’. These candidates are taking a more fluid approach and will move if the role makes sense, but are not as urgent as we saw in 2022 (a great thing)! 

Staff turnover levels have remained low across 2023, with the majority of roles recruited across the year being for new positions, or resourcing projects with contractors. Where we are recruiting new permanent roles, clients are now taking a much more flexible approach and considering remote working, flexible work arrangements and other incentives to ensure the ability to secure talent.  All indications are for continued market growth in 2024, however at a steady pace with no significant disruptions expected (touch wood). 

Demand has remained high across Infrastructure, and Transformation/Professional Services. Generally speaking, Contract has well out paced permanent hiring, with many clients preferring to fill crucial gaps with Contractors while they consider their next move. While new activity is now ramping down as we approach Christmas, we are expecting a quick return to activity from mid-late January.

2023 has been in favour of both client and candidate, and great hiring/employment decisions are being made. Work/life balance, learning opportunities, growth and development and a positive work environment are still top on candidate’s wish lists, with salary a consideration, but not a sole driver.

We will watch with interest as we head into the New Year, but until then, we would like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and hope you take the time to enjoy a relaxing break with family and friends over the festive season.