Employers worried about putting on new staff in times of financial uncertainty have pushed the recruitment pause button.

It’s not that they don’t need new staff -the skills shortage has not been fixed-analysts say it’s just that they are waiting for stability to return before taking on any more risk, and that includes employing new people.

Manpower’s Stephen Hinch says the recruitment firm’s most recent employment intentions survey shows that 64 per cent of companies were ``sitting on their hands’’ in last month’s survey, conducted before the financial crisis hit.

Now, he says more companies have hit that pause button-but only temporarily.

“The reason is that there has been a strong drop in hiring confidence,’’ Hinch says.

“That is what our forecasts (earlier in the year) said would happen in the last quarter of this year but there are three parts to the story. A number of employers said they would increase their hiring-nationally 26 per cent (of companies surveyed), 8 per cent said they would have lay-offs, but 64 per cent pressed the pause button, saying there would be no change happening in the short term. They are holding steady. What we will see happening (in the next survey conducted this week and released in a fortnight), should be a slight decrease in the number of respondents who say they will lay people off, which means we should see employment ticking up slowly.

“But if we had done the survey two weeks ago, we would have seen employers in the doldrums; they wouldn’t have wanted to hire people. The worst has been put behind us now, and there has been a boost in confidence. A week makes a lot of difference. The opportunities are still very strong for people who want to be looking to either move into the job market or change jobs.’’

The Executive Demand Index, charted monthly by recruitment firm EL Consult, backs up Hinch’s forecasts, suggesting “the current (employment downswing) situation is pretty much at rock bottom’’.

EL managing director Grant Montgomery says as the index rose by more than 10 per cent in Queensland last month during the height of the financial crisis, and as that rise was the first for a year, he believes the employment market has only one way to go: Up.

“A lot depends of whether this result is copied in the coming months, but I don’t think it would be too brave to predict things are now more likely to get better than worse,’’ Montgomery says.

The index shows engineering executives were in most demand, followed “closely’’ by management. Montgomery says the index is an early indication of how the market will perform, as companies hire executives to take advantage of a predicted strengthening in the business environment.

The talk about companies cutting back has dominated debate surrounding the impact of the financial meltdown on the employment market.

However, Robert Walkers Brisbane director Sinead Hourigan says a more pressing problem could occur-an exacerbation of talent supply problems.

While employers might have pressed pause on their employment plans, employees are hanging tight to their jobs and are now less likely to consider a move.

“The downturn is hitting, and if there is a recession on the way, this is the first time we have seen a candidate shortage as well,’’ Hourigan says.

“When it happened in 2001, there was such a supply of candidates that it didn’t matter. It was easy to find candidates, so businesses knew that they could put through a lot of redundancies and know they would be able to rehire people in a year’s time.

Organisations don’t have that ability any more. They are not going to find good candidates sitting around in the market waiting for a job.

“Everyone is looking at cutting back, yes, but think long and hard before doing it because it is not going to be easy to find that talent again.’’

She says employers worried about the immediate future should try employing short-term contractors.

“That gives you the opportunity to try before you buy. But if you genuinely need someone, that need is unlikely to go away,’’ she says.

Recruitment consultancy Hays director Darren Buchanan agrees.

“The tendency for candidates to change roles purely to secure higher salaries is becoming less common because candidates want to be confident that their choices will offer long-term opportunities,’’ he says.

Buchanan says there are plenty of good opportunities out there, it may just take time for them to surface. Employers still need to press the “play’’ button and get back to normal viewing.

“There’s been a lot of doom and gloom talk that isn’t justified when you look at employers’ actual hiring intentions as a whole,’’ he says.

“Certainly banking employees are monitoring the global credit crisis closely, and employers are being cautious ensuring their hiring intentions are realistic, but it is not accurate to assume the international financial crisis is impacting the recruitment activity of every bank, let alone every business in Queensland.

“The positive message for today’s jobseekers is that good candidates will always be in demand; we see no evidence that the market as a whole will stop hiring any time soon. In fact, strong demand still exists from those employers looking to `upskill’ their current staff.’’

Hinch says even longer range forecasts look rosy.

“Everyone shouldn’t be too worried,’’ he says. “Job opportunities are just going to get better and better, and we should all remember that the baby boomers are ageing and moving out of the workforce in droves from this year onwards. Some (of that exodus) will slow until their superannuation catches up, but the reality is that we have a rapidly ageing workforce.

“And the industry with the highest ageing workforce-health care-has an average age of 48 or 49 years of age. It’s a huge risk to the Australian economy because in 20 years from now we will lose some 50 per cent of our healthcare workers, at the same time 4 million or 5 million people will require aged health care and there will be no one to look after them. There are huge career opportunities there.’’

So we should all leave our jobs and retrain as health workers?

“Yes, why not?’’