Business & Money | Wednesday 16 December, 2015 10:17 am |

The Monster Employment Index is a monthly gauge of online job posting activity in Middle-East 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. The Index does not reflect the trend of any one advertiser or source, but is an aggregate measure of the change in job listings across the industry.

 

 

“GCC economy growth has slowed down due to the low oil price environment, which has adversely affected growth in the non-oil sectors as well. The job market has not been spared either, as revealed by the Monster Employment Index. The year-on-year growth this month has eased considerably as compared to Q2 and Q3 2015, with the Oil and Gas sector continuing to exhibit the steepest decline in job demand. We expect the slowdown in job demand to continue, in line with the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) regional economic outlook for the Middle East and Central Asia, which has projected further slowdown in GCC economic growth for the short-term,” said Sanjay Modi, Managing Director, Monster.com (India, Middle East, South East Asia and Hong Kong).

 

“In spite of the general slowdown in the job market, the Middle East is witnessing a rising need in serving the GCC Healthcare sector. Looking at the November 2015 data for professionals working in this field, job opportunities continue to soar reaching 36 percent year-on-year growth, in addition to the industry itself recording a 20 percent year-on-year growth in terms of job posting. 

 

“This trend is also reflected in the Kingdom. Occupation wise, Healthcare is leading the year-on-year growth charts for the third month in a row in Saudi Arabia.  Demand for healthcare professionals has increased by 45% in November 2015, as compared to the same period last year,” added Modi.

 

“Sector wise, the top growth industry this month in the KSA are consumer goods / FMCG, Food & Packaged Food, Home appliance, Garments / Textiles / Leather, Gems & Jewelry, which showed a 22% year-on-year growth rate in November 2015,” added Modi.

 

“The worst performing industry is Engineering, Construction and Real Estate which declined a negative 24% in November 2015. Saudi construction firms are cutting back as the government curbs spending in an era of cheap oil. The Kingdom is running an annual state budget deficit estimated by the International Monetary Fund at over $100 billion,” continued Modi. 

 

“We will closely monitor this sector to see the impact of the new regulations on sector growth and consequently, job demand. KSA has just announced plans to impose a tax on all undeveloped plots of land across the country. This initiative might help solve the housing shortage, but also put pressure on real estate, dropping prices in the market,” concluded Modi.

 

Geographic Year-over-year Trends: Online hiring surpassed the year-ago level in four countries out of the seven monitored by the Index

 

• Kuwait led all countries charting the highest growth year-on-year even this month. The long-term growth momentum improved nine percentage points from 23 percent in October to 32 percent in November 2015.

 

• The long-term growth momentum improved in UAE (up 18 percent) as well vis-à-vis October 2015 (18 percent). KSA (up one percent) registered a positive annual growth following low level in October (down two percent). 

 

• Online recruitment in Oman and Bahrain slowed. Recruitment level matched the year-ago level in Oman while recruitment in Bahrain slipped four percent below the year-ago level. Qatar (down seven percent) recorded the steepest decline year-on-year