December 2011 saw some interesting activity, particularly if you follow the Canadian technology landscape.  Ottawa’s March Networks was snapped up by Infinova Canada for $90 million, and Toronto based Rypple was acquired by Salesforce.com!  The BIG deal was SAP’s $3.4 billion purchase of SuccessFactors, who had also announced they were buying Jobs2Web for $110 milion.  It was IBM that was the most active acquirer of the month, paying $440 million for DemandTec, also picking up Emptoris in the procurement world and Irish company Curam Software in the government sector.  There was also an interesting investment in Twitter by a Saudi prince that values that company at around the $10 billion mark.

Around the world there continues to be angst in the various markets, with Europe and the US in particular continuing to struggle with their debt woes.  Having said that there were some surveys this month that suggest there will be some hiring in the first quarter; which is cause for optimism.
 
Symantec reported that spam is hitting our email at the lowest level in three years, but suggest that we can expect more impact in our social media world in the future.  Tough to win with those guys!

So ends 2011, a year that was expected to bring economic recovery but failed to deliver.  Let’s hope 2012 is a better year for the world’s economies. Happy New Year! 

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The job situation in December 2011 and the early part of January is typically affected by the holiday period, which makes it difficult to understand if changes are due to a trend or because of the season.   Clearly world economies have continued to struggle, and hence in general terms companies are still being more conservative in their hiring plans.  There are, however, some positive signs, including McKinsey’s latest perspective on world economics that suggests improved optimism in many parts of the world.
 
Canada remains one of the brighter lights amongst world economies and after two months of job losses was able to show growth of 18,000 jobs in December.  The unemployment rate, however, went from 7.4% to 7.5% driven by an increase in people in the labour market.  In the last twelve months, Canada has added 199,000 jobs.
 
As different news hits the press the Canadian dollar has fluctuated against the US dollar, whilst remaining quite strong.  This month, at time of writing, the Canadian dollar edged back close to par at 98.5 cents US. 

Job growth requires companies to invest, and they are much more likely to do that in a buoyant economy, but companies also look for stability.  This has not been evident in a long while now, as demonstrated by some other key economic indicators.  The TSX at time of writing was about 12,300, which is a big boost from last month when it was around 11,600; however, the markets continue to fluctuate significantly in very short periods of time.  Another key indicator for resource rich Canada is the price of a barrel of oil, which this month is up over $100 a barrel, a gain of better than $6 over last month.
 
Whilst Eagle’s experiences are not economic indicators on a grand scale, we try to tie look at them in light of the above data in order to paint a picture of the job market here in Canada.  December was a short work month as many people take a week off for the holiday period, yet Eagle’s orders increased by about 7% over November.  We also saw a similar increase in actual sold business, which was a very positive indicator when December is usually a much quieter hiring period.  January has started robustly and at this point it seems like the demand for professionals will be strong as we start off 2012.

Read the complete IT Job Market Update

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