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Economics, government & businessJob creation and losses

Employers struggle to fill vacancies as job market recovers

by Personnel Today 21 Jun 2005
by Personnel Today 21 Jun 2005

UK employers are finding vacancies harder to fill than ever, with new government figures showing 635,900 unfilled jobs in the first three months of 2005, up 7,500 (1.2%) on the same period last year.

The Office for National Statistics estimates that more than 10,000 new vacancies are placed at Jobcentres every working day.

The outlook is getting tougher for employers looking to hire, with 28.6 million people in work, up 196,000 on a year ago. Unemployment has fallen 37,000 to just under 1.4 million.

Redundancies have also hit a new low, reflecting how keen employers are to keep their staff. There were 127,000 redundancies in February to April, compared to 139,000 in the same period in 2004.

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Work and pensions secretary, David Blunkett, welcomed the latest statistics.

“The figures tell a positive story about the British labour market,” he said. “They demonstrate our success in creating more jobs, cutting unemployment and moving people into work – particularly people who have in the past been outside the labour market.”


Personnel Today

Personnel Today articles are written by an expert team of award-winning journalists who have been covering HR and L&D for many years. Some of our content is attributed to "Personnel Today" for a number of reasons, including: when numerous authors are associated with writing or editing a piece; or when the author is unknown (particularly for older articles).

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Personnel Today
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