Unemployment 2.0

A greater number of unemployed Czechs are going after fewer jobs, spiking traffic on job Web sites as the job market becomes increasingly difficult to navigate.

As the Czech economy continues to stall in the morass of a recession, the unemployment rate has 7.7 percent as of March, according to the latest statistics from the Labor and Social Affairs Ministry. In March 2008, unemployment was at 5.6 percent, and, while the number of unemployed today is still about 3,000 less than last year, the number of vacant jobs has sunk by 50,000. These numbers have added up to a 48 percent year-on-year increase of replies to job offers posted on Internet job sites such as Jobs.cz. However, as employment Web sites earn money from companies that list jobs rather than the job-seekers, the imbalance hurts their revenues. Jitka Polanská, a spokeswoman for LMC, the firm that owns Jobs.cz and Prace.cz and makes up the majority of the Czech Internet job market, said that, while replies to job ads are up 25 percent, the number of job offers is down 40 percent.

"The number of job offers has dropped significantly on all Internet job boards," she said. "It means there are fewer job opportunities and also less business for job sites, since their revenue comes from companies that have been moderating their recruitment."

The increasing popularity of the Internet has changed the way LMC has done business since Jobs.cz started in 1996, when the Internet was mainly the stomping grounds of IT professionals and computer-savvy individuals, Polanská said. The narrower focus allowed employment Web sites to target potential users.

"At the beginning, the target group for employers was clear," she said. "Since the Internet has become more popular in the mainstream population, employers have been facing the challenge of successfully targeting specific groups while filtering out unsuitable candidates applying for jobs."

According to Polanská, there are two categories of users of Internet job sites: employers posting jobs and monitoring the site and job seekers. Job seekers pay no fee or membership to use Internet job sites, while employers pay a fee to post an ad for a specific length of time. Fewer jobs opening up this year means less money coming into the Web sites, forcing LMC to diversify through HR and other applications, Polanská said.

"Job boards are trying to diversify to help themselves," she said. "For example, while Jobs.cz aims at middle and highly qualified professionals, Prace.cz is a mainstream job board."

Bringing balance

Historically, there has been a shortage of skilled workers in the Czech Republic, meaning that highly trained workers with foreign-language knowledge have been in high demand. The economic crisis has specifically affected the industrial sector, but its effects are beginning to be felt in other areas of the job market, as well, said Polanská.

"More than a labor shortage, we should speak about a lack of balance between what employers need and what employees offer," she said. "Many HR managers agree that the economic crisis is bringing more balance to the labor market."

Navigating the multilingual Jobs.cz is fairly simple. A job seeker can choose from a list of firms with job openings, or specify a particular industry or position with a minimum salary as well as location in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. A search for a position in journalism turned up three pages of job offers, not all of which were relevant, however.

Salary is typically one of the main concerns of job seekers, but, as unemployment continues to increase, those looking for work are becoming less picky about their potential job, Polanská said. At the same time, wage growth has stagnated this year at 3.7 percent, compared with the usual 5 percent to 8 percent growth. The IT field has enjoyed huge salary growth in the past as demand for specialists boomed, but the financial crisis has reined that in.

"IT salaries are so high that such growth had to stop sometime, regardless of the crisis," said Jan Bílek, a senior manager at Robert Half International, a recruitment firm in Prague.

Sales and marketing jobs have been the most popular sector for young Czechs in the past decade, because the sector offered numerous well-paid positions. But rising competition over open jobs has affected even the most popular sectors, said Polanská.

"Sales force is the employers' No. 1 need, but the marketing budget has been cut considerably in most companies," she said.

Many industry analysts predict that the recession will have more of a significant effect on the employment market rather than the Internet job site market as such. As public confidence in the financial sector declines, many students could choose a different career path, thus altering the job market over the next few years.

"Young people might begin to be driven by real interest for their profession, rather than only an attractive salary," she said.

Stephan Delbos can be reached at
sdelbos@praguepost.com