Job Market Improvement? Permanent Jobs Rose at the Fastest Pace for Two Years in October

The monthly Recruitment and Employment Confederation and KPMG Report on Jobs, published today, signaled sharper rises in both permanent and temporary staff appointments during October.

• Growth of permanent appointments accelerated to a two year high.
• Growth of temporary job at the sharpest rate in sixteen months. respectively.
• Overall vacancies increased for first time in seventeen months.
• Weaker falls in both permanent and temporary staff pay.
• Permanent salaries fell only marginally in October and at the slowest pace in the current thirteen-month period of decline.
• Temporary staff pay also registered a weaker drop, with the latest fall the smallest in a year.

Commenting on the report, Kevin Green, Chief Executive of the Recruitment & Employment Confederation, said:

“These figures show that the UK jobs market is on the road to recovery, with signs of improvement for the third month in a row. The demand for permanent recruitment is returning as employers start to hire people at an accelerating rate.

“Based on the latest findings, we anticipate that unemployment will not reach 3 million in 2010 as some predicted. This again highlights the benefits of the UK’s flexible labour market and a balanced attitude towards employment legislation in terms of keeping people in work”.

Press Release: Markit Economics [PDF].

Note: The Report on Jobs is a monthly publication produced by Markit Economics on behalf of the Recruitment & Employment Confederation and KPMG. The report features original survey data which provide the most up-to-date and comprehensive monthly picture of recruitment, employment and employee earnings trends available.

The index is a “diffusion index”. Diffusion indexes have the properties of leading indicators and are convenient summary measures showing the prevailing direction of change. An index reading above 50 indicates an overall increase in that variable, below 50 an overall decrease. Reasons given by survey respondents for any changes are analysed to provide insight into the causes of movements in the indices and are also used to adjust for expected seasonal variations.

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