Today sees two separate labour market surveys revealing good news for jobs and employment in the UK.

Amid cautions of ongoing volatility, broker ICAP releases its Labour Market Indices and Manpower publishes its Employment Outlook Survey.

Manpower’s survey, based on interviews of 2,101 employers in the UK, asked whether firms were likely to increase or decrease employment levels in the upcoming quarter: 9% said they expected it to increase, and 5% said it would likely decrease.

While this gave a ‘net employment outlook’ of 4%, the seasonally adjusted figure was 6%, the highest since the start of the recession.

There was significant regional and industry variation in the report – the East, the East Midlands, finance & business services and mining industries among those faring better, while news was not so good for the North-East and Scotland, and the construction industry.

The full Employment Outlook Survey can be downloaded from Manpower's website.

ICAP, which takes its data from a representative set of over 60% of all UK job advertisements, says that a 3.7% decline in applications per vacancy suggests a likely lowering of people claiming jobseekers allowance in November.

It also notes that average salaries rose by 1%, the first rise in eight months. However, declines in vacancies of 7% and 10% respectively in the permanent and temporary markets “illustrates the volatility and continued fragility of the UK labour market”, the company says.