• The number of LinkedIn job listings for graduate graphic designers grew faster than any other entry-level listing in the year to April, the platform says.
• Demand for graphic designers was borne of the transition to the digital economy, accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic, said Matt Tindale, country manager for LinkedIn Australia & New Zealand.
• “The request for remote working and flexible working conditions is progressing markedly,” Tindale added.
• Visit Business Insider Australia’s homepage for more stories.

It’s a good time to be a graphic design graduate in Australia, according to professional networking platform LinkedIn, which says the discipline recorded the fastest-growing number of entry-level job listings over early 2021.

In a new report, LinkedIn states the number of entry-level job listings for graphic designers grew by a larger margin than any other profession in the first quarter of 2021 compared to the first quarter of 2020.

The Australian job market’s appetite for design graduates speaks to a digital transformation accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic, said Matt Tindale, country manager for LinkedIn Australia & New Zealand.

Retailers transitioning to e-commerce have sought out graphic designers to package their digital offerings, Tindale told Business Insider Australia, with subscription services and software as a service firms also seeking visual solutions for online markets.

“I think it’s very much aligned to the macro growth,” he said. “We’re seeing the shift in sectors that are much more related to the digital transformation of the economy generally: digital content creation, marketing, and therefore graphic designing.”

The next fastest-growing category of entry level job listing: teachers, followed by sales workers, product managers, and electricians.

LinkedIn said improved opportunities for graduates in those fields contributed to April’s hiring rate increasing more than 116% on a year-on-year basis.

The pandemic has also influenced how those graduates can expect to work. The number of job listings for remote working positions has increased 14-fold since January 2020, Tindale said, with “real desire” for flexibility “trickling down to the graduate postings at the same time.”

And would-be employees are increasingly saying that flexibility is a precondition for their employment.

“We think globally the request for remote working and flexible working conditions is progressing markedly,” Tindale said. “That is just absolutely happening.”

The equation works both ways, too. Many employers have been forced to look further afield due to skills shortages, borne of international border closures and other long-running gaps in Australia’s skills mix.

“So it’s from an employee demand perspective — a lot of people wanting more flexibility, the ability to work from home or remotely outside of major cities — but also as a consequence of sometimes skills or labour shortages, and companies having to go outside of the traditional large cities,” Tindale said.

The overall hiring data comports with the findings of dedicated job listing platforms Seek and Indeed, both of which reported massive spikes in job listings over April as Australia’s economic recovery from COVID-19 started to pick up speed.

Those findings run parallel to the unemployment rate, which has fallen to 5.1% faster than most economists predicted at the height of 2020’s widespread lockdowns.

LinkedIn says the industries which reported the highest number of job listings between January and March this year were Software and IT services, followed by construction, corporate services, manufacturing, and healthcare.

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