According to Grant Montgomery, Managing Director of executive search firm E.L Consult, the executive employment market is showing itself “highly resilient to wars, inflation and interest rate rises”.

“This includes skilled and semi-skilled jobs as well as executives, the surge in demand for executives has been across every state and territory, and every industry group.” says Montgomery.

“This is good news for the Australian employment market, but presents a conundrum for the Reserve Bank – if it has hiked official interest rates 10 times in 10 months in order to choke off demand but executive employment and general employment are at record highs, where can it go from here?

“Yes, it takes monetary policy some time to filter through the economy, but the signalling effect should have been by now that money is going to be more expensive for some time to come and should be taken into account when devising corporate employment plans. Obviously, so far it has failed to make a dent,” Montgomery notes.

EL Consult says that while executive employment is now at a high, the general unemployment rate has also now reached close to its record low at 3.5 per cent [seasonally adjusted].

“We are not expecting this type of growth to continue at pace – there should be some room for some kind of correction - but the jobs market is hot right now,” Montgomery said.

“There are opportunities across the country and in all industries. 2023 has so far seen executive employment rise above its past trading range.

“In particular, it’s good to be in Finance or Information Technology, with Finance executives in hot demand in the light of the changing economic conditions, and Information Technology executives wanted to further integrate corporate software systems and research the effects of artificial intelligence (AI) on all aspects of business.

“Digging under the surface”, Montgomery said there may be unresearched reasons as to why employment is so good right now.

“A skills shortage is driving a lot of the employment but one might ask why has this skilled shortage arisen?”, Montgomery asked.

“It is really only something that has become obvious over the last two years - since Covid in fact.

“Obviously, Covid highlighted and exacerbated a skills shortage in the medical sector and the increased internet shopping showed problems with delivery services.

“But with executive employment there is another sleeper that no one is admitting to and that is that productivity has fallen through the floor.

“Why is this? One of the dirty secrets of working from home is it has hit productivity.

“Sure, when it was new everyone wanted it to work and there was a lot of benefit from not having to do the daily commute.

“But like all new workplace changes it has become obvious to many that when not under direct supervision and the ability to work as a team in person, commitment to an employer wanes.

“Further to this, without collegiate discussion the home-based employee has found it more necessary to solve everything for themselves. Finding this solution can take many times longer than if the employee is in the office, and also increases the risk that the solution is wrong, short-sighted, does not take into account the effect the solution will have on others, and may dump the organisation into greater legal or regulatory issues,” Montgomery said.

EL Consult also says that in February all states and territories were positive, and Queensland led thelarger states with a 15 per cent gain, while the smaller regions were again the best performing off a smaller base - and the Northern Territory and Tasmania performed strongly, followed by South Australia.

“Amid the industry sectors there were again widespread gains. Finance recorded the largest gain at 16 per cent, followed close by Information Technology (rising again) and Marketing (recovering some ground,” concludes EL Consult.