The employment of Information Technology (IT) It was the only activity in the Uruguay which suffered a contraction during the first quarter, according to the Labor Monitor of the human resources consultancy, Advice, perceiving a drop of 31.5% in the last twelve months.
According to the consulting firm’s report, the demand for employment in general began a stable year, marked by positive performance in 4 of the 5 activities studied, where the exception was the group of Information technology.
During the first quarter of the year, a total of 16,314 employment opportunities were published, ensuring that no significant variations in the volume of demand were perceived in the last three quarters. In this way, the stability trend observed since mid-2023 is consolidated.
However, an interannual decrease of 4.3% was observed, which is due, first of all, to temporary seasonal factors, but also to the numbers of IT jobs that dragged down the general percentage.
The group of activities that saw the greatest year-on-year increase were engineering and trades, with a 10.4% and 3.8% quarterly increase. This is followed by Logistics and Transportation with an increase of 8.1% year-on-year and 6.7% quarterly. Meanwhile, in the area of administration, accounting and finance suffered a year-on-year decrease of 0.2%, although a quarterly rebound of 10.1%. Lastly, the sector sales, commercial management and marketing had an increase of 0.2% and 3.6% year-on-year and quarterly, respectively.
Disillusionment in the IT sector
While last year the big news was the constant increase in employment for this sector, the report from Advice assures that during the first quarter of the year the item of Information Technology suffered a considerable loss.
Regarding the quarterly variation, the sector received 18.8% fewer offers of employment. Meanwhile, the year-on-year decrease reached 31.5%. This result is added to the contraction that was registered in said period, which accumulates a reduction of 33% in the last 6 months.
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Advice
In this way, the level of demand It went from being around 3,000 employment opportunities per quarter towards mid-2023, to just over 2,000 in the last measurement. “The unfavorable evolution of labor demand reflects the situation of the technology sector globally, which in the last year has experienced significant job cuts and shows less dynamism in the generation of new job opportunities,” explains the report.
“To this international situation is added a loss of local competitiveness caused by an increase in the price of Uruguay relative to the region, which includes labor costs; The permanence of this comparative disadvantage has motivated several global technology companies (where the formation of multinational work teams is part of the norm) to direct their talent searches toward candidates from other countries,” he adds.
Source: Ambito
