Recruitment Blog

Why ANZ is seeing a strong recruitment recovery in 2021

Sarah Linney

Content Marketing Manager at JobAdder

The ANZ recruitment market is experiencing some real joy in 2021 with the recent release of JobAdder’s global report, revealing a bunch of eye-popping first quarter figures.

The ANZ industry is clearly picking up the pace with big increases in new jobs created and an amazing recruitment recovery post-COVID-19.

To chat about these results, Martin Herbst (our fearless leader and CEO) appeared on ticker NEWS (check out the video at the end of this blog), where he shared some stats and explained how the ANZ recruitment sector has bounced back so well.

Pulling insights from the JobAdder platform, he revealed that the Australian market saw a 29% increase in new jobs in Q1 2021, compared to Q4 2020 where there was only a 3% boost in new jobs.

As usual, the New Zealand market couldn’t help beating the Aussies and saw a staggering 47% increase in new jobs in Q1, compared to Q4 where they only had a 1.8% jump.

This influx of jobs means that the new challenge for many ANZ recruiters is sourcing quality candidates in increasingly tight talent pools due to closed borders.

Interestingly, it’s great to see that Q1 2021 results compare favourably to pre-COVID-19 numbers in Q1 2020. On ticker NEWS, Martin said: “If you look at the year over year numbers, because if you think about Q1 [2021] versus Q1 of 2020, that’s a pre-COVID-19 market and even those numbers are quite impressive. So, we saw in Australia again, the overall jobs created jumped 21% and then in New Zealand [they jumped] 39%.”

He added that: “I think the economy is back. We’ve got companies who are much more confident coming out of COVID-19 right. There are a few reasons for that confidence. We’ve got a vaccine rollout that’s underway at the moment. We’ve proven that we can successfully work through the pandemic. We locked down and succeeded beyond our expectations.”

Take a look at the free report for yourself for more insights, but here’s a breakdown of a few key stats that show things are seriously looking up for the ANZ recruitment sector:

For permanent placements:

(So, once the new jobs are created in the JobAdder platform, how many are actually leading to a placement/hire?)

Australia is up 16.5% in Q1 2021 compared to Q1 2020
New Zealand is smashing it, with a 36.9% increase, year on year.

For temp and contract placements:

(So, the number of placements for roles that are temp or contract)

Australia is up 33.7% in Q1 compared to Q1 last year
New Zealand is up 20.3%
In January, temp and contract placements were up 23.7% in Australia, by March they were up by 47.4%
In January, temp and contract placements in New Zealand were down by 3% and by March they were up by a staggering 64.1%

The report has a bunch of other insights for you to explore, like placed jobs ratios (including for the UK, US and Canada), days to place, placement splits, and percentage changes for average fees.

Check out the report here for the full findings, and watch the full ticker NEWS interview below to hear more insights from Martin.