Demand for engineers up 12% in 8 weeks

Melbourne-based engineering recruitment specialist RPRN Engineering, says engineering job vacancies jumped 12% between November and the end of January.

Its vacancy index, which tracks Internet job advertisements by skillset and state, established a base of 100 last March. In November that stood at 139 and by the end of January was at 155.

Principal of RPRN Jack Foley said the new index figure shows significant emerging trends.

“The stand out demand increase is for water engineers and that is up almost 65% since November. Demand in this area has effectively doubled since the index was established,” he said.

The need for water engineers was greatest in NSW and Victoria but there was a similar trend across all states.

Foley said that Australia wide demand for engineers rose by 14%, electrical engineers by 18% and mechanical engineers by 21% in the latest survey period. Other strong increases were for project engineers (up 18%) and environmental engineers (up 24%).

“This is quite an exceptional opening to the year and suggests that demand for engineers of all disciplines will remain strong and unsatisfied for the rest of the year. While Victoria and NSW show moderate increases, demand is strongest in Queensland and Western Australia where demand for engineers increased by 21% and 17% respectively.”

Foley said the logical conclusion was that there would be increased pressure on salaries and contract rates for all engineering disciplines over coming months.

“Professional engineers also seem more ready to shift interstate to work where remuneration rates and demand is the highest. So there will undoubtedly be significant pressure of smaller organisations in other state under these conditions,” he said.

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Demand for engineers up 12% in 8 weeks

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