Galway is still one of the best places in the country to be a jobseeker, according to new figures released last week by an online recruitment index. The IrishJobs.ie jobs index report measures jobs advertised across Ireland’s five leading online recruitment businesses. The index reveals a three per cent drop nationally in jobs advertised since September 2009.

Luckily for local jobhunters, the drop in Galway was less than the national average, down just two per cent when comparing Q4 2009 to Q3.

Analysis shows that figures from October to December are in line with predictions and represents a more stable jobs market than this time last year.

Despite the small drop in jobs advertised, Galway has still come out as one of the top counties for jobs advertised in the last quarter of 2009.

Strong sectors in Galway included engineering, IT, sales, science, pharmaceutical and food. The lesser performing sectors are hotel and catering, retailing, wholesaling and purchasing.

Nationally, the top counties for jobs in Q4 were Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway and the sectors with the biggest increases in jobs advertised online in Q4 were secretarial and administration (up 24 per cent), financial services (up 18 per cent), online and IT (up 19 per cent) and marketing (up 12 per cent).

The substantial increase in marketing is very promising according to the report, as it suggests that organisations are more hopeful for the year ahead.

The sectors which saw the biggest decreases in Q4 were hotel and catering (down 19 per cent), retail and wholesale (down 14 per cent), education, childcare and training (down 23 per cent); and beauty, hair care, leisure and sport (down 20 per cent).

However, despite hotel and catering seeing a decrease in jobs advertised online, it remains one of the sectors with the greatest number of jobs advertised online overall in Q4, along with sales and IT.

"There are positive signs that key business sectors are now actively recruiting again. Findings also reveal that large corporate businesses, which first felt the impact of the downturn early in Q1 2009 and stopped hiring, are now reporting increased levels of recruitment which is an indicator of economic stability," said Jane Lorigan, Managing Director of saongroup.com Ireland, which owns IrishJobs.ie.

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