November saw the growth of permanent job vacancies has reached a 25-month low, while for the 28th month in a row, billings for temporary and contract staff rose, according to the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC) and KPMG Report on Jobs.

Yesterday, recruiter.co.uk reported Reed’s contrasting findings that its job index is at a 23-month high, suggesting signs of the UK economy ‘rebalancing’.

The KMPG/REC study shows that the rate of increase of temporary billings was weaker than in October, and while pay for both permanent and temporary vacancies rose, it was at a 10-month low.

Kevin Green, chief executive of the REC, says: “The government has done as much as it can in the short term to remove restrictions to employment and stimulate demand. However, if confidence doesn’t return quickly to get the jobs market moving again, the government may need to take more radical action in the New Year.”

Bernard Brown, partner and head of business services at KPMG, adds: “This month’s Report on Jobs makes grim reading…Time will tell if recent interventions are enough to reverse the worrying trend of the last few months. If so, we should pick this up in our statistics over the next few months.”

Brown adds that strong and growing demand for IT and computing, executive/professional and secretarial/clerical jobs staff were “bright spots in an otherwise gloomy data set”.