Private sector job vacancies advertised in 2010 in Sri Lanka's two main government weekly newspapers, the Sunday Observer and the Silumina, fell 16%, to 59,593, from the previous year, and were almost half those from 2008, according to the seventh edition of a job vacancy survey published recently by the Planning, Development and Research Division of the Ministry of Productivity Promotion, which used these newspapers as a basis to draw conclusions about the domestic job vacancies situation. Further, 2009's job vacancies were 70,978 while 2008's were 113,987.
The survey also noted that factors contributing to this downward spiral in job vacancies, especially in 2010, could be as obvious as a shift by advertisers to more web oriented advertising, which would also mean that there were more job opportunities in the market than accounted for. On the other hand, the cause of these lessening job vacancies could be, especially before 2010, implied and unforeseen effects of the global downturn and its subsequent US and Europe specific recessions likely contributed. Also possible, socio economic turbulence resulting from security operations in the North of the island would have facilitated the 2009 decline.
Additionally, a prior edition (2010) of the survey, which showed significant drops in private sector job vacancies advertised between 2008 and 2009, had also cited weakening economic conditions in the country and the advancing age of the working population as potential influencers of the decline of more than 40,000 job vacancies between 2008 and 2009. Also noteworthy was that the 2010 survey also identified the 2009 number as the lowest recorded in five years.
On the other hand, the most recent survey, published in end-2011 in the Labour Market Information (LMI) Bulletin, Volume 1, Number 1 of 2011, also stated: "Sri Lankan job market has shown a considerable improvement in job opportunities in April- October 2009. This may have been fuelled by the emergence of Northern Rehabilitation projects and acceleration of Eastern Development projects with the end of Civil war in May 2009. In addition, massive infrastructure development projects, including the Hambantota Harbour, have added a considerable amount of new employments that would have cushioned any contractions incurred in Sri Lankan labour market under the Global crisis.
Moreover, the careful economic management of the government during the recession has also mitigated the impacts of to the Sri Lankan labour market, especially in industrial and service sectors including financial and banking services that could have been collapsed as happened in many other countries. Consequently, the total numbers of vacancies reported in each month over the period from April to October 2009 denote a significant increase in job opportunities in Sri Lankan labour market irrespective of the worsening conditions in global context. Ultimately, this upward trend has reached its peak in October 2009 with the number of vacancies totalling to 12,736, which was a dramatic increase of 84% of the previous month.
Contrarily, the total numbers of vacancies reported in November and December 2009 have expressed steep declines (of 43% and 47% respectively), which might have happened due to the political instability prevailed in Sri Lanka during the Presidential and Parliamentary elections periods. This contraction of new recruitment creation has not been fully recovered throughout the year 2010, despite the peaks in months of February, May and October."
Meanwhile, identifying job vacancies advertised in main newspaper sections as formal sector vacancies, the 2011 survey further indicated that there were typically 2,000 formal vacancies per month in 2010. This was apart from hikes in February (3,159), May (3,558) and October (3,036) as well as a dip in January (1,050). Also noted, a similar pattern had been observed in 2007 and 2009, but, in 2008, hikes had instead been shown to come about in March and August.
In terms of informal sector job vacancies, as represented by utilising classified newspaper ads as primary data, the 2011 survey suggested that vacancies peaked in January, June and October, with drops in April and September. Additionally, the survey noted that that the highest number of vacancies were in the informal sector with 31,000 plus in this sector (54%) with the balance in the formal sector, which was a sharp turnaround from the previous survey during which the formal sector was 57% of total job vacancies and the informal was 43%.
Further, the survey stated that the largest number of employment opportunities (10,018) was recorded in the "elementary occupations" category, which is an International Standard Classification of Occupations referring to workers with basic or no skills. This was also broken down into 6,379 classified ads and 3,639 main section ads.
There were also three additional job categories that garnered over 8,000 vacancies a piece. These were "Service & Sales Workers" (9,778), "Professionals" (9,041) and "Crafts & Related Trade Workers" (8,764). However, the survey also noted that, while the number of jobs on offer in these three categories was similar, the composition of jobs in the "Professionals" category was 70% formal sector with almost the reverse holding true for the "Crafts & Related Trade Workers" category where 72% of posts were classifieds.
According to the survey; "This signifies the generally accepted axiom that the 'top-jobs' that belong to occupational categories such as 'Managers', 'Professionals' and 'Technicians and associate professionals' have a more likelihood of advertising vacancies in main advertisements, whilst vacancies in all other job categories are tend to be advertised in Classified section."
The survey also highlighted the fact that the number of ads for the"Skilled agricultural, forestry and fisheries workers" positions was "extremely insignificant."
Additionally, it was further indicated that "more than 55% of the total vacancies had been for 'Semi-skilled and Elementary occupations', while for the skilled and high skilled categories the proportions were 24.4% and 19.9% respectively. Compared with previous years, all these three categories have shown declines in number of vacancies reported in 2010 than in 2009. However, the relative drop in vacancies for skilled occupations is quite low, yet the same is consequent to a significant drop in 2009 against 2008."
The survey also went on to note that, in terms of gender orientation, the data collected showed a continuing disparity with highs of as many as 20 ads specifying men to every one ad including women in the "Crafts & Related Trade Workers" category to a significant preference for males expressed in ads for Managerial positions as well as industrial jobs and categories such as "Skilled agricultural, forestry and fisheries workers", "Technical and associate professionals" and "Plant and Machine operator." On the other hand, women were asked for more in the "Clerical and support workers" sector. These results also rang true for previous surveys.
Also emerging; "The highest number of vacancies reported for 2010 were for Security guards (2,189) in general, which was primarily in the 'Administrative and support services' sector. In the Manufacturing sector, the highest demand was for Supervisors (386 vacancies) and Advertising and Marketing professionals (282). The later job category has yielded the highest number of job opportunities in 'Wholesale and retail trade' and 'Financial and Insurance' sectors as well. The Civil engineers were the most demanded in the Construction industry while the education sector had provided more employment opportunities for Secondary education teachers." |
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