Unemployment up, but some signs of health
30 March 2012
The UK unemployment rate for the final quarter of 2011 rose 0.1% to 8.4%, reveals the Office for National Statistics (ONS), but the number of people entering employment and a rise in recruitment in January give some cause for optimism.
Weds, 15 Feb 2012
The UK unemployment rate for the final quarter of 2011 rose 0.1% to 8.4%, reveals the Office for National Statistics (ONS), but the number of people entering employment and a rise in recruitment in January give some cause for optimism.
While the number of unemployed people rose 48,000 to 2.67m, the number of people in work was up 60,000, to 29.13m, with Charles Levy, senior economist at The Work Foundation, welcoming this rise, which he says “is in sharp contrast to the steep falls recorded in the autumn”.Levy says: “Today’s labour market statistics offer us further hope that the economy was stabilising at the end of 2011.”
This correlates with the Recruitment & Employment Confederation’s (REC’s) January ‘Report on Jobs’, produced in co-operation with KPMG, which showed a rise in the number of permanent job placements made in January – outside of the period covered by the current ONS data – the first such increase time in four months.
PASA to close
Scott Liversidge, managing partner at medical recruiter Flame Health, calls the REC/KPMG report “the only positive indicator in the jobs market at the moment”, although he goes on to add: “There are still sectors creating jobs. Healthcare, clerical, IT and engineering & construction are just some of these.”
Richard Baker, a director at Robert Half UK adds that “there is still increasing supply and demand for jobs in specialised areas such as accountancy, finance, IT and financial services”, areas that have been consistently singled out as strong performers in recruiter.co.uk coverage of previous unemployment figure releases.
Baker adds that a net 14% of senior business executives surveyed by Robert Half last month plan to increase their permanent headcount in the first half of 2012, and is optimistic that the government’s Youth Contract – further details of which came out yesterday – can help “avoid a lost generation of talent that will impact the modern workforce for years to come”.
Levy at the Work Foundation goes on to add that apparent “shift towards part-time work” may actually be key to understanding today’s ONS figures, noting that the number of full-time jobs fell by 10,000, with the number of “part-time workers unable to find full-time work” standing at 1.35m.
“It will take several months of sustained job creation before we can expect to see unemployment fall significantly,” he adds.
The ONS figures also show that employment for UK nationals was down 166,000 between the final quarters of 2010 and 2011, while over the same period employment for non-UK nationals was up 166,000, and that one in three of the unemployed have been looking for work for over a year.
The UK unemployment rate for the final quarter of 2011 rose 0.1% to 8.4%, reveals the Office for National Statistics (ONS), but the number of people entering employment and a rise in recruitment in January give some cause for optimism.
While the number of unemployed people rose 48,000 to 2.67m, the number of people in work was up 60,000, to 29.13m, with Charles Levy, senior economist at The Work Foundation, welcoming this rise, which he says “is in sharp contrast to the steep falls recorded in the autumn”.Levy says: “Today’s labour market statistics offer us further hope that the economy was stabilising at the end of 2011.”
This correlates with the Recruitment & Employment Confederation’s (REC’s) January ‘Report on Jobs’, produced in co-operation with KPMG, which showed a rise in the number of permanent job placements made in January – outside of the period covered by the current ONS data – the first such increase time in four months.
PASA to close
Scott Liversidge, managing partner at medical recruiter Flame Health, calls the REC/KPMG report “the only positive indicator in the jobs market at the moment”, although he goes on to add: “There are still sectors creating jobs. Healthcare, clerical, IT and engineering & construction are just some of these.”
Richard Baker, a director at Robert Half UK adds that “there is still increasing supply and demand for jobs in specialised areas such as accountancy, finance, IT and financial services”, areas that have been consistently singled out as strong performers in recruiter.co.uk coverage of previous unemployment figure releases.
Baker adds that a net 14% of senior business executives surveyed by Robert Half last month plan to increase their permanent headcount in the first half of 2012, and is optimistic that the government’s Youth Contract – further details of which came out yesterday – can help “avoid a lost generation of talent that will impact the modern workforce for years to come”.
Levy at the Work Foundation goes on to add that apparent “shift towards part-time work” may actually be key to understanding today’s ONS figures, noting that the number of full-time jobs fell by 10,000, with the number of “part-time workers unable to find full-time work” standing at 1.35m.
“It will take several months of sustained job creation before we can expect to see unemployment fall significantly,” he adds.
The ONS figures also show that employment for UK nationals was down 166,000 between the final quarters of 2010 and 2011, while over the same period employment for non-UK nationals was up 166,000, and that one in three of the unemployed have been looking for work for over a year.
