Who's hiring

• Supermarket chain Waitrose is opening four new stores in London after buying the sites in Chiswick, Clapham, Edgware Road and Islington from Woolworths. The acquisitions will create 700 new jobs.

• German discount supermarket chain Aldi plans to spend £1.5bn on a five-year UK expansion plan, which will increase its 400 stores to a 1,500-strong empire, according to the Sunday Times. It also plans to hire an extra 1,500 staff in Britain and Ireland over the next 12 months.

• The Ministry of Defence has signed contracts worth £3.2bn to build two new aircraft carriers for the UK. The contract will create or secure 3,000 jobs at Govan in Glasgow, 1,600 at Rosyth in Fife, 1,200 in Portsmouth and 400 in Barrow in Furness.

• Dublin-based telecoms company Digiweb is bringing forward plans to recruit 200 staff, mainly in IT and sales over the summer.

• Soft drinks giant Coca-Cola is seeking to invest e190m (£150m) in a state-of-the-art giant new plant at Wexford Business Park, Ireland, creating 100 new jobs.

Who's firing?

• Volvo Cars is cutting 2,000 jobs (about 8% of its global staff) in response to soaring raw material costs and weaker sales in the US and European markets.

• House builder Taylor Wimpey has announced an additional 300 job cuts, on top of the 600 announced in the last issue of Recruiter, after failing to secure a deal to raise about £500m.