London Recruitment shows signs of picking up?

Posted by Paul, October-8-2009

There appears to be some much craved good news for Londoners hard of work since the onset of the recession.

Earlier in the year London recruitment looked bleak as the Centre for Economics and Business (CEBR) reported the capital would fare particularly badly due to its reliance on financial and business services.

However, a report out this week suggests after 16 months of consecutive decline “the number of people placed in permanent jobs has risen for the second consecutive month” according to Bernard Brown, head of business services at KPMG in the Wall Street Journal.

The monthly Report on Jobs, produced by Markit Economics for KPMG and the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) provides an index system which measures recruitment of permanent staff placements in the UK. A score of below 50 describes a decline, whereas August and September of 2009 have seen a rating over 50 showing an increase with measurements of 50.6 and 51.3 respectively.

It appears as though London recruitment as well as the UK as a whole has seen the base of the economic lows and things may be starting to pick up.

It has been recently reported that jobs centric to recruitment in London such as financial staff were rising for the first time in 18 months and demand for executives and professionals were also rising for the first time in 15 months.

The KPMG/REC survey of 400 recruitment consultants also showed the availability of permanent candidates rose further in September, suggesting that demand for staff is stabilizing.

Yet, London recruitment firms have reported that the labor market is still “very fragile”. Brown of KPMG suggested there are areas of optimism, but warned of a “twin-track economy” in which we see a recovery in the private sector but “large scale job losses in the public sector become ever more likely as the government finally tackles the huge budget deficit.”