According to a survey published by Reed Executive plc a greater number of U.K. employers are seeking to recruit staff and fewer are looking to cut jobs.
Over one thousand respondents revealed recruitment demand overall has risen 10 percentage points compared to the last quarter, with 88 per cent of organisations planning to recruit in the third quarter of 2004.
Dr John Philpott, Chief Economist at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development said, “The economic recovery is gathering pace and the labour market is getting ever tighter as more organisations look to recruit and fewer plan to make redundancies. Despite this there is still no sign of an imminent surge in wage pressure. But with private sector recruitment increasing at a time of low unemployment, employers will have to remain on their guard to ensure that wage costs are kept under control. Failure to do so could result in higher interest rates.”
Regional recruitment growth continues to grow more than London and the south while recruitment demand has risen by seven percentage points in the Thames Valley, underlining the return to health of the IT sector in the UK’s “silicon valley” heartland, growth in London and the South East still lags behind that in the Midlands, North and East Anglia.
Almost two thirds (63 per cent) of organisations in the North West are looking to recruit to grow over the next quarter; a 24 percentage-point increase on Quarter Two 2004. Businesses in East Anglia show the biggest
increase in recruitment growth, with over half (54 per cent) of businesses looking to recruit for growth in the next quarter.
The Midlands has the smallest percentage of organisations planning redundancies, with only three per cent of organisations looking to downsize compared to a national average of six per cent. In both the North East and the North West only four per cent of organisations plan to downsize. In contrast, one in ten organisations in the South West are planning to downsize over the next quarter, four percentage points above the national figure.
Richard Post, Director of Reed Accountancy comments: “This substantial increase in recruitment demand in the Finance sector, following the flat period of the last two years, marks a real step change in the jobs marketplace.
