Professional hiring strong despite uncertainty about Brexit

Professional recruitment firms now have 2% more vacancies on their books than this time last year according to new survey data from the Association of Professional Staffing Companies (APSCo), despite fears around Brexit and the fact the UK’s economic growth forecast has been cut. 

The annual increase recorded by APSCo is in line with the latest figures from the Office of National Statistics, which show that the number of people in work increased by 478,000 year-on-year in January, driving UK employment to 31.42 million. 

However, there are notable variations between different sectors in terms of hiring activities. Financial services permanent vacancies are up 13% and permanent marketing roles have also increased strongly, at 10%. But IT and engineering both recorded dips in activity of 4% and 12% respectively.

This is despite high profile investment banking job losses, an impending merger of the London and Frankfurt stock exchanges, and fears that the UK banking sector could suffer if Britain votes to leave the EU in June. 

Temporary and contract vacancies remained resilient, with opportunities up by 7% across the board year-on-year. Vacancies across financial services, however, were particularly strong, rising by 85%.  

APSCo’s figures also reveal that median salaries across all professional sectors continue to climb steadily, increasing by 5.1% year-on-year. Here there were also notable fluctuations in terms of sector, with accounting and banking, for example, recording uplifts of 8.9% and 5.7% respectively.

Ann Swain, Chief Executive of APSCo, said: “Despite highly published job losses within the investment banking arms of Credit Suisse and RBS, and fears that an EU exit could cost up to one million jobs, our data shows that demand for permanent talent in the sector remains strong despite Brexit uncertainty.”

“While the current regulatory environment has resulted in traditionally high-risk areas such as investment banking shedding UK-based staff as they become less profitable, it has simultaneously created opportunities for compliance, analytical and change management specialists to work across other areas of the banking sector. This new landscape, coupled with year-end deadline pressures, has resulted in consistently strong demand.”

John Nurthen, executive director, global research for Staffing Industry Analysts, which compiles the report for APSCo, added: “Given how sensitive temporary demand is to the state of the economy, the decent increase in professional temporary and contract vacancies suggests that the UK economy is still relatively stable despite the ‘cocktail of threats’ George Osborne warned about in his latest budget.”

“It should be noted, however, that our data suggests staffing firms have had more difficulty in filling these vacancies since the last quarter of 2015. While temporary/contractor placements are up 4% over the prior year, growth has been easing and failing to keep pace with the volume of vacancies received – rather indicative of a market experiencing skills shortages.”