The Middle East employment index has risen 51 per cent on annual basis, with retail/trade and logistics leading all industry sectors with 85 per cent annual growth, said a report.

BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance) and engineering also continued to register strong growth of more than 30 per cent, according to the Monster Employment Index, a monthly gauge of online job posting activity in Middle-East.

The index is 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.

“The Index continues to exhibit robust online recruitment activity as the Index reached the highest level in the series since October 2010,” said Sanjay Modi, managing director, Monster.com (India/Middle East/South East Asia).

“All the major sectors including Retail/ trade and logistics, BFSI, Education have recorded notable sequential and annual growth across all the key markets,” he added.
IT and telecom is the only sector to register negative annual growth, down 7 per cent in April, the report said.

Online opportunities exceeded April 2011 levels in 2011 of 2012 industry sectors monitored by the index.

Occupation year-over-year trends

Nine of the 11 occupation groups registered improved online demand over the year, with sales and BD (up 77 per cent) leading all occupational groups in year-over-year growth.

Purchase / logistics / supply chain (up 63 per cent) and finance & account (up 60 per cent) saw increased demand year over year, while legal (down 7 per cent) professional continued to exhibit the strongest annual decline. The demand for legal professionals also fell on month-over-month basis by four per cent.

Geographic year-over-year trends

Online opportunities exceeded April 2011 level in six of the seven countries monitored by the index.

Saudi Arabia, with a growth of 49 per cent, led all countries in year-over-year growth, followed by Kuwait (up 43 per cent). UAE and Bahrain registered growths of 41 and 35 per cent respectively, said the report.

Oman (down 3 per cent) continued to chart the most notable annual reduction among countries for the fourth consecutive month. – TradeArabia News Service