Permanent staff appointments via recruitment agencies in Britain rose at their slowest pace in 14 months in October, the Recruitment and Employment Confederation said today.
The industry body's monthly permanent staff placements index fell to 52.6 in October from 54.6 in September, with anecdotal evidence suggesting that employers had become more hesitant due to looming public spending cuts.
Levels above 50 indicate growth.
Growth in billings for temporary staff also slowed to its weakest in 14 months, with the index slipping to 51.6 from 52.8. Demand for both permanent and temporary staff was the weakest in a year, although pay growth picked up.
"Many public sector organisations have now started redundancy programmes or at least imposed hiring freezes and at the moment the private sector is not creating new jobs in sufficient numbers to offset this," said Bernard Brown, a partner at accountants KPMG who sponsor the survey.
The government plans to reduce the budgets of most government departments by around a fifth over the next four years to narrow a budget deficit that hit a post-war record of 11 per cent of gross domestic product last year.
The government reckons that private sector growth will be enough to compensate for the half a million job losses in the public sector planned over the four-year period.
Reuters