Payquest News
Good news for contractors...
The sign-off of budgets for contract and temporary staff looks set to absorb some of the 53,000 people who in the last three months swelled the unemployment pool to 2.5million.
On the eve of official data showing unemployment at a 15-year high, agency body the Recruitment and Employment Confederation said the outlook for non-permanent workers using recruiters had improved.
In the REC survey of 200 clients, the proportion who said they would maintain or increase their use of temporary staff in the next three months stood at 88 per cent, up two per cent on the previous month.
Roger Tweedy, research director at REC, explained the findings by saying contract staff were "providing a bridge in capacity" until end-users could grow their payroll workforce, probably not until the autumn.
"The current demand for agency workers is spearheading the jobs market," he said, and "reinforces the importance of a flexible workforce while the economic recovery continues."
Recruitment firm Randstad Staffing agreed, saying it was clear that clients were favouring the "flexible" staffing model, as a "safeguard against any lingering uncertainties about the strength of the recovery.”
"The [REC's] findings...are typical of classic recession recovery patterns," said the firm's finance director Andy Moss.
"We have seen an early cycle rise in the demand for permanent staff followed by a slightly lagged increase in demand for temporary workers.
"This is consistent with an economy that is emerging from a period of negative growth to more benign trading conditions."
The latest REC JobsOutlook survey also reveals a drop in the number of employers - 35 per cent - who are planning to make redundancies to their workforce in the next three months.