Recruitment leaders across the UK are forecasting sales growth in 2023, with agencies based in Wales expecting the highest growth, according to a report from Firefish Software.

At 70%, agencies in London are forecasting the slowest growth in 2023, compared to Wales’s 83%, said the Firefish research in ‘The Future of the Recruitment Industry Report 2023’. However, of all the UK regions, Wales’s recruitment leaders are more cautious about the year ahead generally, with 67% of Welsh respondents neither optimistic nor pessimistic about 2023. In comparison, more than 75% of agency leaders in the North of England are optimistic about the year ahead.

“From the data, it’s evident… that overall, confidence remains positive throughout the industry; however… confidence levels have retracted with a 14% change in the number of agency leaders reporting a ‘very optimistic’ position heading into 2023 vs 2022,” the Firefish narrative said.

In addition to a doubling of respondents who took a neutral position about what would happen in the coming year, the mood had changed from last year in other ways, with a small percentage of other respondents having a pessimistic position, “a view that no agency leaders reported last year”, the narrative said.

When asked how they expected their sales to change in 2023, compared with 2022, most respondents said that they predicted an increase of 1-25% in the next year. However, 8% of agency leaders said they anticipated more than a 50% sales increase. Taking a contrary view were more than 10% of respondents who expected to see their sales decrease in 2023, the report said.

In terms of headcount, over 60% of agencies plan to increase the number of recruiters in their businesses in 2023, with only 1% expecting a drop in the total number of recruiters working at their agency. More than a third of agencies do not plan on making any changes to their total headcount.

The survey was completed by a total of 194 recruitment agency owners, with technology the sector with greatest representation at 24%. The second largest representation came from the engineering, manufacturing & logistics sector, with 15%.

For the full report, visit www.firefishsoftware.com

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