I read your article ’Employers shift from temp to perm hires’ (1 March) with great interest. The economy continues to be challenging, the budget is imminent and there is a huge piece of new employment legislation arriving in October.

All of this makes for very mixed signals and doesn’t provide a clear pointer to the way forward. Our FPS umbrella company has seen the number of temporary workers coming onto its books boom in both January and February with its best months for three years.

We believe that the reason for this is that employers are going for temporary labour as a stop gap while they wait to find out what impact the budget will have on their finances.

In April the market could change again but for now the signs within the temporary marketplace continue to look strong as government continues to cut full-time jobs and ’top up’ with temporary staff.

Simon Last-Sutton, managing director, FPS Group