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Garry Roberton reports a fall in New Zealand tech job advertisements in his latest regular Trends update for the IITP Techblog. This comes at a time when the overall demand for tech skills remains strong.

He writes:

Unfortunately, the positive business sentiment is not backed up in terms of the number of Seek ICT job adverts for this month, with a drop of 16 percent on April's figure of 2483, and 8 percent down on May 2013 (Fig.2 below). This could be due to a dip in business confidence, possibly as a result of 2014 being an election year, although there may be many reasons for the sudden drop in Seek ICT advertised jobs. Perhaps the unexpected return of New Zealanders from Australia, the United Kingdom and the USA, with the requisite ICT knowledge, skills and experience are taking up many of the available positions.

It's not just Seek. Roberton also notes a 13 percent fall in tech jobs advertised on TradeMe. The sharp fall in May is out of synch with the pattern recent years which sees ads climb towards the middle of the year before falling off as summer approaches.

As Roberton points out, the May 2014 fall in advertised tech jobs could be an aberration.

It may also be due to the way recruitment companies operate. There's not always a direct link between vacancies and advertisements. It could also be with large numbers of overseas New Zealanders returning home and an inflow of immigrants looking for work, the recruiters have a relatively full pipeline and don't need to spend money advertising.

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