Online job posting on the rise in the Middle East

The outlook for the UAE remains very positive and the country has projected a high level of employment in 2015, according to Sanjay Modi of Monster.

Online job postings were driven higher by the chemicals, paints and fertilisers sectors. Pawan Singh / The National

A big regional employment index jumped 10 per cent last month compared to a year earlier, driven higher by jobs in sectors such as chemicals, paints and fertilizers.

The Monster Employment Index Middle East is a monthly gauge of online job posting activity in the region, based on a real-time review of tens of thousands of employer job opportunities culled from a large representative selection of career Web sites and online job listings, Monster said.

Egypt achieved the highest growth among all Middle Eastern countries in terms of availability of online jobs, followed by the UAE, which was up by 13 per cent, and Saudi Arabia, which was up by 12 per cent.

Kuwait was the only country to record a negative annual growth of one per cent.

“Among GCC countries, the outlook for the UAE remains very positive and the country has projected a high level of employment in 2015,” said Sanjay Modi, the managing director of Monster for India, the Middle East, South East Asia and Hong Kong.

Sectors such as chemicals, plastic, rubber, paints, and fertilizers and pesticides were up 40 per cent, followed by hospitality sector with 32 per cent growth.

“The production/manufacturing, automotive and ancillary was below the baseline even this month,” said Monster in a statement.

“However, the sector which has been charting negative annual growth rates since November 2012 for the first time saw online recruitment levels match the year-ago level this month.”

Advertising, market research, public relations, media and entertainment registered a seven per cent drop in online recruitment activity, the steepest among all sectors.

“Online demand expanded for ten of the 11 occupational groups monitored by the index,” the statement said.

“Aligning with steep growth in the hospitality sector, there was a greater demand for hospitality and travel professionals.

“Online demand surpassed that of December 2013 by a robust 27 per cent which was the same as in November 2014.”

The steepest decline in occupations was in customer service, decreasing by 10 per cent.

The banking, financial Services and institutions sector posted the most growth in the UAE, expanding by 27 per cent in December compared with a year ago.

It was followed by the IT and Telecom/Internet Service Provider sector with a 25 per cent growth, and the production, manufacturing automotive and ancillary sector with 22 per cent.

The weakest industry performance was in hospitality with a 17 per cent decline.

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