UK Job Market - The Consultancy Group Review

With the Recruitment Market experiencing an upward swing for some months now, The Consultancy Group www.consultancygroup.com were pleased to attend a recent event hosted by The Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) which highlighted some of the factors in the UK’s current Labour Market. Some of these key points are as follows;

• Comparing the estimates for the three months ending January 2015 with those for August to October 2014, employment continued to rise and unemployment continued to fall. These changes maintain the general direction of movement since late 2011/early 2012.
• There were 30.94 million people in work in the three months ending January 2015, 143,000 more than for August to October 2014 and 617,000 more than for a year earlier.
• There were 22.64 million people working full-time, 481,000 more than for a year earlier. There were 8.30 million people working part-time, 137,000 more than for a year earlier.
• The proportion of people aged from 16 to 64 in work (the employment rate) was 73.3%, the highest since comparable records began in 1971.
• There were 1.86 million unemployed people, 102,000 fewer than for August to October 2014 and 479,000 fewer than for a year earlier.
• Comparing the three months ending January 2015 with a year earlier, pay for employees in Great Britain increased by 1.8% including bonuses and by 1.6% excluding bonuses.

The REC’s report on jobs showed that every sector in every region in the UK was experiencing growth in all of the 9 main industrial sectors. The REC has never seen data like this before.

Their research found that 62% of employers plan to grow their permanent headcount over the next three months with 23% saying they will increase their use of Temporary / Agency workers.

Despite this positive outlook these numbers have highlighted some key problems facing UK Employers. The most notable of these is the skills and talent shortage that is worsening.

Through our daily interaction with both candidates and clients at The Consultancy Group, it is clear that the demand for “top talent”, particularly within the Finance and Accounting space remains strong across all of our key verticals. However the supply of this talent is harder to source resulting in organisations having to question what is takes to attract the best skills and talent in the marketplace; but now more than ever, what steps need to be taken to retain their best people.  

These key topics of discussion are clearly not just to be found in the Finance and Accounting space but across the wider UK Labour Market. We will be discussing these in later blogs but these figures certainly give plenty of food for thought into the factors currently affecting our workforce.

If you would like to discuss any of the topics covered above please contact me on [email protected]