The employment market showed a “worrying deceleration” last month, raising fears that sluggish economic recovery will hold back job creation in the private sector and fail to offset widespread public sector job losses.
 

A survey of 400 recruitment consultancies undertaken by the Recruitment and Employment Confederation and management consultancy KPMG revealed that the hiring of both permanent and temporary staff rose at its slowest rate in seven months.
 
Their index gave a reading of 55.1 for permanent employees, down from 60.6 in April, and 52.5 for temps, down from 56.6. Any reading above 50 indicates a rise in job placements compared with the previous month.
 
Vacancies were also at the lowest level in five months, while the availability of workers to fill them likewise dropped slightly when compared with April.
 
Kevin Green, the REC’s chief executive, said: “The latest data shows a worrying deceleration in the UK jobs market. Although the number of placements has continued to increase, the rate of expansion has hit a seven-month low.”
 
While private sector job creation had not hit the buffers, it was “clearly slowing”, which heightened concerns over whether or not public sector job losses could be absorbed, he added.
 
“There have been signs of increasing employer confidence in some sectors, but economic growth remains too fragile to spark the real step-change that our jobs market needs. With consumer confidence at a low ebb, many individuals who would normally be looking to change jobs are staying put,” Green said.
 
Although the labour market has held up relatively well this year, with unemployment slightly down on last year at 2.46 million or 7.7% of the workforce, the flat recovery is fuelling anxiety that jobless rates may increase.
 
Bernard Brown, KPMG’s head of business services, said the figures revealed a “marked slowdown of the UK jobs market. We’ll need to see whether this is a trend of a blip”.