A quick glance through the pages of any newspaper will reinforce this belief. Over the past six months, the pages of the tabloids and broadsheets have been liberally doused with horror stories concerning a raft of redundancies and other drastic measures on the way, such as salary capping, reduction of hours and almost any other measure legally possible for a body or business to reduce its costs. For someone seeking to enter the jobs market, it made painful and worrying reading, but is this actually the case in real terms?
Certainly, for some people in the jobs market, finding relevant paid work has been problematic. In July 2010, the Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR) published the results of its biannual survey, which revealed that the number of graduate vacancies had fallen by seven per cent in the past year. To compound matters, these figures came on the back of a drop of 8.9 per cent in 2009.
The AGR also reported that 2010's graduates were finding competition for the reduced numbers of jobs increasingly tough. In 2010, 78 per cent of graduate employers stated their minimum degree criterion is a 2.1, a proportion that's up nearly 11 per cent since 2008. In addition, there are greater numbers of graduates applying for fewer posts, with large numbers of university leavers who qualified in 2007, 2008 and 2009 still seeking work and sending in applications for these posts. On average, there are now 69 applications for every graduate vacancy, as opposed to 49 in 2009 and 31 in 2008.
These stark figures, combined with the drastic expected rise in tuition fees, may help explain why we have seen such vehement protests around the country by students recently. Nevertheless, despite these facts and predictions against the backdrop of dark, continual reminders of the financial mess the country is in, there may just be one or two rays of hope permeating the employment void.
The first beacon of light came this autumn in a report by High Fliers Research, which revealed that despite falling vacancies for graduates in the past two years, 2010 promised to buck that trend against all expectation. Indeed, the top 100 employers in the UK revealed they had increased their graduate recruitment targets for 2010 by 12 per cent, which in real terms amounts to an extra 1,600 graduate jobs across the UK.
This is somewhat unexpected. Many industry experts felt that the jobs market in the UK would either stagnate or remain particularly sluggish during 2010 and 2011 before starting to improve by 2012. Unemployment was predicted to rise markedly as public sector workers bore the brunt of the cutbacks, and the number of job vacancies was expected to dwindle initially as the teeth of the recession took hold. Therefore, to hear such positive findings so early, even if it was in one section of the jobs market was surprising, but welcome, news.
The positive, for those seeking a more optimistic appraisal of the UK jobs market, is that this single piece of good news for jobseekers has been replicated in other areas of the employment sector.
On December 1st, the Financial Times reported that UK purchasing managers’ index for manufacturing had surged in November, reaching a 16-year high, providing a boost in exports and the result of which had seen a rise in vacancies for companies fuelling this boom. Businesses were hiring new employees more quickly than at any time since 1992, with 300,000 new jobs in the private sector created since September 2010.
This increase in exports came on the back of promising figures announced in October 2010 regarding the spectre of unemployment. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) revealed a raft of statistics that seemed to show that the country might have already weathered the brunt of the recession, namely;
- Working age employment rate has risen by 0.3 per cent to 70.8 per cent in the last quarter.
- The unemployment rate stands at 7.7 per cent, down 0.1 per cent over the quarter. In addition, the number of people employed in this quarter was up by 167,000, and most surprisingly, up by 300,000 over the last 12 months.
- Unemployment was down by 9,000 and those seeking benefits for being out of work fell by 3,700, down by a staggering 162,400 over the previous year.
The figures prompted Chris Grayling, the employment minister, to state:
“Unemployment is down and employment is up, which is good news. The private sector is leading the way and creating jobs and opportunities for people across the country.”
A month later, the CIPD also revealed that there were more job vacancies available in the UK than at any time in the previous 12 months, while job satisfaction among workers had also increased.
“Whilst there is concern about the level of redundancies the public sector are going to make, there are more vacancies overall available now than 12 months previously, so it’s certainly not as bleak a picture as it could be,” an insider was quoted as saying.
While swinging cuts still loom in many public sector areas, the good news for the UK jobs market is that private sector growth is fuelling an economic revival sooner than anticipated. This revival is leading to a buoyant jobs market and the first positive signs for UK job seekers for a long time. For sure, the signs of revival are still in their infancy and many issues, particularly in the public sector, remain to be addressed, but there is renewed hope that these increasingly positive signs for the UK jobs market will signal a stronger economy and better job prospects for all into 2011 and beyond.
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