Sourced Report | IT & Technology | August 2021

Key Findings:

1. The vast majority of IT workers in both cities expect to leave their current role within a year.
2. Salary is only middlingly important to respondents, and most believe their salary is fair – although the majority is slight.
3. Unemployment levels have started to come down again, from 22% last report to 15% this report.

NZ employers should be mindful – most of their IT workers will likely be gone within a year. In Christchurch, 15% of respondents say they think they’ll be gone from their current role within 3-6 months, 25% say it’ll be 6-12 and 25% are looking for a new role right now. In Auckland, those figures are all higher: 17% (3-6 months), 29% (6-12 months) and 32% (currently looking).

Christchurch workers feel more strongly about the importance of salary than Aucklanders, but only slightly. When asked to rate its importance on a scale of one to five, Christchurch respondents were right in the middle (average of 2.51) with Aucklanders behind at 2.03. Indeed, you’ll see in our graphs in this section and the comments below that there are other things more important than money to an IT worker.

Salaries are, however, considered mostly fair. The majority of respondents from both cities (53% Christchurch vs. 49% Auckland) felt their salary met expectations and was fair, although those thinking it is lower than expectation were just behind (40% and 44% respectively). Compared to our last report, Christchurch respondents feel their salaries are now less fair while Aucklanders feel they are more fair.

Recruitment Trends in the ‘The New Normal’

Key Findings:

1. Hiring activity remained very stable these past six months, with expectations that the stability will continue for another six.
2. Employers are currently hiring to accommodate new projects, and to a lesser degree, replace staff.
3. Permanent staff are the preferred option, though there’s been a six-point increase in desire for contractors since March.

We’ve been tracking hiring activity for a while now. It dropped all the way down in September 2020, then started to bounce back in March 2021. Since then it has remained quite stable: the number of employers who have hired one or more employees in the last six months dropped only slightly, from 92% (March) to 89% (August). A further 84% expect to hire again in the coming six months.

For most employers, the reason behind their recent spate of recruitment is that they have new work/projects needing completed (75%). This was followed by the replacement of staff (69%), then an increase in demand of both IT within the organisation as well as from customers (44% each).

And which channels led to the most recruitment success? For 71% of employers, advertising / external promotion was most effective, followed by the use of a recruitment agency (65%).Internal promotions accounted for a reasonable number, 47%, with professional networks coming in at 35%. The clear majority of employers preferred permanent staff (84%) over contractors (16%), which indicates a slight increase in preference for contractors since our March report (+6 percentage points).