Popular Job-Searching website, jobberman.com recently published a report on job seekers in the country. The report, which incorporates data gathered from the platform, seeks to help job seekers understand the labour market. Outlined below are some key points:
The data used covered the period of Oct – Dec (2015) making it the last quarter of the year and the breakdowns is as follows;
• 11, 889 accounts for the total number of vacancies available on jobberman platform and they are distributed monthly thus; 4620 applicants in Oct, 4696 in Nov and 2563 in Dec.
With the data above, it can be seen that Nov has the highest number of vacancies while the figures dropped significantly in Dec.
• 737033 accounts for the total number of applicants with the monthly breakdown as; 318233 in Oct, 248347 in Nov and 170453 in December.
It can be seen here that Oct has the highest number of applicants, followed by Nov and the least being Dec.
It was reported that the dropped was as a result of seasonal variation. ( Coughing, *Oh what a jargon – I do not know how to explain this in plain terms o)
NOTE HERE: With the said data above, it can be deduced that 68.88 applicants applied to one job in Oct, 52.88 applicants applied to one job in Nov and 66.51 applicants applied to a single job in Dec.
The applicants and the vacancies ratio are so wide – Meaning there are many job seekers chasing a single job.
PERSONAL NOTE: Though the report claimed to review the data covering the last quarter of the year (The 3rd Quarter, Q3). July, August, and September was also included in some section of the report.
(I would have loved to lay my hand on the complete data set but that wasn’t the case.)
In as much as I would have preferred the raw data, sadly, it was not given out. I will try as much as possible to work on the given ones.
APPLICANTS DISTRIBUTION BY STATE:
I will be commenting on this so as to help job seekers to know which state to look forward to while strategizing on their next job application.
• Lagos has the highest number of applicants with a total of 79399, followed by Abuja with a total of 14648. Leaving Rivers and Oyo with the third and fourth position with 8869 and 6489 applicants respectively.
• Yobe and Jigawa have the least number of active applicants with 82 and 87 total applicants.
VACANCIES AVAILABLE BY STATES.
The surprising thing here is that there are some states without active vacancies (i.e. ZERO VACANCIES – Like Nada), yet they claimed a good share of applicants. What are they applying for?
• States like Akwa Ibom, Anambra, Bayelsa, Ebonyi, Edo, Ekiti, Jigawa, Kogi and Yobe have no vacancies yet they have a good number of applicants.
• States like Imo, Katsina, Nasarawa, Ogun, Ondo, Osun, Plateau, Sokoto has 1 vacancy within the period under review.
• Lagos, Abuja, Rivers, and Oyo claimed the most share of vacancies posted with 188, 16, 15 and 9 respectively.
APPLICATIONS BY EDUCATION
I do not think this is of much interest but it cost nothing to point it out.
• Candidates who applied through Degree, HND, and MBA/MSc took it all with numbers totaling 64564, 15160 and 11437 respectively while candidates with vocational certificate have the least figures. Of all these applicants, 67.77% are males while 32.23% are females. ( Are females not applying for jobs? – Just asking anyway!)
POINTS TO TAKE HOME
1. The most common specialization that was asked for on the Jobberman website was for Sales/Business Development, which accounted for 15.68% of jobs. IT and Education/Training both accounted for a similar share; 12.02% and 11.54% respectively. At the other extreme, only 0.12% of vacancies required a specialization in Telecom, and 0.32% required a specialization in Building Design/Architecture.
2. A slight majority (52.98%) of active vacancies had been online for more than six weeks. The lowest duration for which a vacancy had been active online was 26 days, just under four weeks. The longest duration was recorded as 195 days, slightly more than half a year. The average duration for which vacancies were active online was just over seven weeks.
3. Over the six months to December, there were only 159 active vacancies for which salary information was available. Of these, the average salary was N 127,264 per month ( Methinks they can do better here)
4. Of all the active vacancies advertised on the Jobberman website, the majority did not require a great deal of experience; 55.15% of vacancies require less than three years.
5. As at the time of the previous report, the majority of industries (23 out of 27) asked for 1-3 years of experience the most. Three industries – Legal, Oil & Gas/Mining and Manufacturing/production – asked for 3-5 years of the experience the most, and the Insurance industry most commonly advertised for entry-level positions. ( Why are people shying away from Insurance. LOL)
6. Education and Trade/Services attracted relatively few applications in relation to the number of vacancies that were posted; there were 20 applications for every Education vacancy and 33 for every Trade/Services vacancy between the months October and December
7. Even though Trade/Services was the most common industry to apply to, it did not dominate applications to the same extent as vacancies. At the other end, the industries Power/Energy and Travel/Tourism received 461 and 366 applications per vacancy over this period, suggesting that these posts were extremely competitive. ( How market?)
8. In each case, Power/Energy, Oil & Gas/Mining and Logistics/Transport were among the most competitive, occupying the first, second and third position in the earlier period, and first third and fourth in the later. Similarly, Trade/Services and Education were amongst the least competitive on the Jobberman website in each period.
9. Only 2.4% of applicants under 20 years of age were educated to above degree level, perhaps unsurprising given the length of time it takes to obtain this level of education. For applicants above 50 years old, this figure rises to 45.2%; nearly half of applicants within this age bracket have a higher qualification than a degree.
10. An estimated 59.86% of applicants were between the ages of 20 and 29, making this by far the most common age group for applicants to fall under. Very few applicants were below the age of 20, possibly a sign of the relatively high education level of applicants.
11. The industry to receive the most applications in each month was Trade/Services, which accounted for 36.02% of applications over the three month period. In October, the industry received 119,900, or 37.68% of applications, more than three times as many as Consulting which received the second largest share. However by December, this figure had fallen to 33.08%, due to a fall of 63,513 in the number of applications.
This represents a fall of 52.97%, and accounts for 42.98% of the total fall. The Consulting industry saw a comparatively modest drop of 37.11%, however, given that this industry accounted for 12.13% of the total number of applications over the period, this still accounted for 8.50% of the total decline in applications. The third largest industry over the period was ICT/Telecommunications, which received 5.91% of applications over the period. Applications to this industry fell by 51.13% between October and November, slightly more than average.
12. This fall in the number of applications was broad based; out of the 27 different industries, 23 received fewer applications during the review period. Four industries did not experience any decline in the number of applications, these industries were Construction, Power/Energy, Food services and others, but together these industries accounted for only 4.66% of applications over the period.
13. Trade/Services remained the industry to which the largest number of applications were made, and which posted the largest number of vacancies.
14. Power/Energy and Travel/Tourism were the industries to receive the most applications per each vacancy, receiving 461 and 366 respectively, which makes them the most competitive industries to apply for on the Jobberman website.