Businesses are confident about employment prospects for the immediate future despite concerns that the economy may slow down next year.
According to the latest quarterly labour market survey from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), 86 per cent of employers are planning to take on more staff this autumn.
The figure shows little change from the two previous quarterly surveys.
Some 46 per cent of those employers who responded are aiming to recruit additional staff this quarter.
Recruitment is particularly strong in private sector services where 59 per cent of employers are looking to add more staff to their workforces, compared with just 25 per cent in public services.
The proportion of employers intending to make some staff redundant has fallen from 20 per cent to 17 per cent since the summer survey.
However, John Philpott, the CIPD’s chief economist, sounded a note of warning: “Despite the evident optimism in this quarter’s survey it remains likely that the demand for labour will ease during the course of 2008 as the impact of recent interest rates rises and the aftermath of the credit crunch is felt throughout the economy.”
Mr Philpott added: “If recent experience is anything to go by, employers will adjust to weaker economic conditions by cutting back on recruitment rather than increase redundancies. This would imply a hiatus in recruitment next year and a recurrence of the ‘labour hoarding’ which resulted in a slump in growth in productivity when the economy last cooled in 2005.”
Date:15 November 2007
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