How long will the Olympics job goldrush last?

Labour market data published today by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) offers up the latest jobs market conundrum. According to the ONS, unemployment decreased and employment increased, resulting in the highest employment rate the UK has seen in three years.

This is despite an increasingly gloomy economic backdrop, and comes amid warnings that employers are holding on to higher numbers of staff than they need in order to remain competitive, but they fear they might need to make redundancies if productivity does not increase.

It’s certainly a paradox – how can employment rise while productivity falls? One explanation might be the “Olympics bubble” – a surge in temporary employment in the run-up to and during the Games. This is evident in the fact London accounted for over half of the UK’s jobs growth from April to June.

But, now the Games have ended, how long can we expect their positive impact on the jobs market to last? We know that many of the jobs created for the Games were short-term roles, and as Games-related activity and productivity eases we can expect some of these to fade away.

So should we simply expect an inevitable slump in the figures when they are next released? Or is there a way in which the country can capitalise on the Olympics effect for longer?