Recruiting now
Once again this week, the employment market was blessed with all sorts of news and once again, not all this news was good. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has warned that as many as one in ten men will be unemployed by the beginning of 2010. The CIPD's statisticians revealed the sobering fact that there has been a 50% increase in the number of male unemployed during this recession. Furthermore, 20% of 18-24 year olds are also unemployed.
The official unemployment figures, published earlier this week, confirmed that unemployment has risen again, although the rate of this increase is slower than at any time since July last year. The number of unemployed is 2.47 million which represents 7.9% of the population available to work. Work and Pensions Secretary Yvette Cooper acknowledged that unemployment "remains a serious problem, which is why we must keep increasing support and advice to get people back into jobs." Chief Economist of Investec, Philip Shaw, described the figures as "more encouraging than we had hoped", whilst the General Secretary of the GMB union, Paul Kenny, commented that the data revealed "some tentative signs of a very fragile recovery in the economy."
There were warnings this week that cutting public sector jobs without careful planning and management could limit the effectiveness of public services. The Link Tanks research project highlighted a number of areas that needed improvement in terms of the management of staff and procurement in the public sector. Amongst these was the interesting fact that the average time it takes to recruit a new candidate in the sector is 186 days, which must cause strain on existing staff and an over reliance on temporary workers.
Employee confidence in the UK decreased in the third quarter of 2009, according to Kenexa Research, whose research claims to relate this drop to the economic slump and can be seen as predicting consumer confidence. Anne Herman of Kenexa commented that "the recovery is not going to be a straight line of positively improving results."
There was mixed news within the financial recruitment sector this week. The Morgan McKinley Employment Monitor stated that the number of new jobs within financial services in the City fell by 8% in September, with new vacancies falling 35% year on year. At the same time, new candidates grew by 1%, although this figure was down 32% on the same period last year. Despite this fall, Morgan McKinley's MD (Financial Services) Andrew Evans stated that there was "little change in sentiment amongst hiring managers from August to September. August recorded the highest volume of new job opportunities coming onto the market this year and September followed closely behind. Employers' appetite to hire has continued to improve in the last month." Furthermore, the market for City jobs has improved steadily, if slowly, during recent months and compared to a year ago the sector is in a much more positive place.
This sentiment was echoed by figures from pre-employment screening company Powerchex which revealed that employment offers within investment banking increased by 51% month on month in September from August, whereas hedge funds recorded a 30% increase against an overall increase in recruitment since June of 200%. A note of caution was sounded by MD Alexandra Kelly, who stated that September may be a seasonal anomaly, as graduate recruitment programmes move into full swing and suggested that monitoring the figures over the coming months may give a truer picture of the market.
The Financial Times reported earlier this week that a block resignation of staff from RBS Coutts in Singapore may actually signal a return of confidence in the banking recruitment sector. An expert from recruiter Selby Jennings suggested that such resignations only occur when staff are very confident about finding future employment, maybe even all together in another bank!
Back in the UK, in Scotland, leading financial recruiter Joslin Rowe claimed this week that banks and financial services firms in Scotland are struggling to recruit new staff to important business areas. In banking operations, salaries for new recruits have steadied, with internal pay freezes and the disappearance of entry level roles also being a feature of the financial recruitment market in Scotland.