Recruitment industry now worth £31.5bn, up nearly 10pc from the year before, but skills shortages could create problems
Recruitment is now a £31.5bn industry, up 9.7 per cent compared to last year.
According to a report released today by the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC), recruiters placed 634,000 people in a permanent post over the last year, and have helped 4m workers find a permanent role since the recession.
Also, 1.2m people were on a temporary, interim or contract placement found via a recruiter on any given day last year.
Temporary and contract placements, which account for 90.5 per cent of the recruitment industry’s earnings, are getting longer, with only 21 per cent lasting less than 12 weeks this year, down from 43 per cent the year before. Meanwhile, the proportion of these placements lasting six months or longer rose to 48 per cent, compared to 28 per cent last year.
The recruitment industry itself now has 103,200 people working in it.
However, skills shortages have dampened the otherwise upbeat year, with around a third of recruiters placing permanent staff and nearly a quarter of those placing temporary staff citing a lack of candidates with suitable skills and experience as a concern.
“Every day recruiters change people’s lives and make businesses more prosperous by matching individuals to vacancies in all sectors of the economy,” said Kevin Green, chief executive officer of REC. “The real challenge recruiters are highlighting is a shortage of people with the right skills to do the jobs being created. To avoid the recovery stalling the government needs to work with business to improve the numbers of skilled candidates available through better training, careers guidance and apprenticeship programmes.”
An earlier report by REC and professional services firm KPMG discovered that 41 per cent of recruiters had placed more permanent staff during October than they had during September, which was the highest level of recruiters who had seen their appointments increase since June.
When that report was released, Green spoke out about the number of employers reporting skills shortages, saying it raised a big question about sustainability.
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