Northern Ireland Jobs Market Analysis

We at CPL partner with clients in many business sectors on an all island basis including Engineering, Multilingual, Administration, Finance, Retail, Sales, IT, Light Industrial and Hotel & Catering.  We have been noticing that clients in the Retail space for example have continued to hire throughout last year as a result of continued expansion in the sector, especially but not limited to the border regions.  The Multilingual space has also continued to flourish over the past year and indeed clients in this sector are continuously seeking candidates with fluency in Dutch and German specifically.

The IT sector has already started to recover with urgent requirements for candidates with Java, Unix, SQL Server experience – skillsets which seem to be in short supply on the market at present.  A point worth considering here however is that candidates are choosing in a lot of instances to stay where they are for now while the economy recovers, so the short supply of the above skillsets is more than likely a symptom of candidates’ need for job security and if their jobs are secure, they are holding on to them.  It is only the candidates unlucky enough to have had roles made redundant who are currently seeking new opportunities for the most part.   

The retail sector in Newry continues to enjoy great footfall.  Assisted by the exchange rate and a lower cost base and coupled with the quality of service and retail offerings, Newry has enjoyed a continuation of last year’s success in terms of numbers of visitors from south of the border.  This has, to a certain extent, created a situation for Newry where the downturn felt in more northerly areas of Northern Ireland has not been felt as strongly - this can be seen in the occupancy levels of retail units in the 2 main shopping centres in Newry and also the occupancy levels on the high street.

CPL as a group is noticing that companies are engaging temporary workers more and more at present in order to give them the flexibility to have resources available at short notice without having the cost of a permanent employee.   The employer also has the ability to downsize the temporary workforce at short notice should they need to. 
This arrangement is beneficial for both the employer and the employee as the expectation is very clear on both sides – the employee goes into the arrangement fully aware that this is a short term piece of work and the employer has the potential to lengthen or shorten the engagement according to the needs of the business.

CPL NI has 2 offices in Northern Ireland – one on Belfast’s Adelaide Street and one on Newry’s St Mary’s Street.