Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Maternity & paternity
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • Brightmine
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Free trial
    • Request a quote
  • Webinars
  • Advertise
  • OHW+

Personnel Today

Register
Log in
Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Maternity & paternity
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • Brightmine
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Free trial
    • Request a quote
  • Webinars
  • Advertise
  • OHW+

Recruitment & retention

Recruitment market remarkably stable in 2006

by Personnel Today 12 Dec 2006
by Personnel Today 12 Dec 2006

Four in 10 UK employers (41%) planned to recruit additional staff in the third quarter of 2006, according to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) and consultancy KPMG’s latest Labour Market Outlook survey.


The study of 1,435 UK private and public sector organisations showed a slight decrease from recruitment intentions in the previous quarter (down 2%) but a 5% rise on the same period in 2005.


Recruitment plans have remained relatively stable throughout the year, with the outlook for autumn 2006 running parallel to that of spring 2006 at 41% – in marked contrast to the wide variations shown in 2004 and 2005.


Over the longer term, the outlook shows a different trend. Autumn 2006 showed a 10.5% drop from autumn 2004 when it was 52%, and the summer 2006 quarter showed a 15.3% decrease from summer 2004 when it was 58%.


While recruitment activity has broadly stabilised in 2006, it has not yet returned to 2004 levels, the CIPD said.



Smaller employers have bigger recruitment plans


The CIPD/KPMG survey indicated that, in general, the smaller the company, the bigger the recruitment plans, while businesses with under 500 employees are most likely to hire.


Almost three-quarters of employers (73%) with less than 10 staff expected to hire new staff in the second half of 2006. And about seven in 10 (68%) companies employing between 10 and 49 staff expected to recruit, followed by 54% of businesses with 50-99 employees.


More than one-third (36%) of employers with between 500 and 999 staff planned to increase numbers, compared with 31% of businesses with 10,000-20,000 staff.


Employers with 5,000-9,999 employees were the least likely to recruit, with just 19% planning to take on extra staff.


Less than a third (29%) of businesses with more than 20,000 staff planned to recruit.



Northern Ireland and London stay upbeat


Employers in London and Northern Ireland are the most optimistic about their recruitment intentions over this quarter, with about half (53% and 50% respectively) planning to take on more staff, the CIPD/KPMG’s Labour Market Outlook survey showed.


Companies based in London and Northern Ireland were significantly more buoyant in their recruitment outlook than most other regions, followed by the North West (45%), Scotland and the North East, both at 39% respectively.


Wales was cautiously optimistic, with more than one-third (37%) of Welsh employers expecting to hire more staff over the coming months. One-third (33%) of West Midlands employers also expected to recruit, followed by Yorkshire and Humberside (31%) and the South East (also 31%).


Organisations in the East Midlands and the East of England were the least optimistic, with just 15% of East Midlands companies planning to recruit, compared with less than one-quarter (22%) of those in the East of England.


Sign up to our weekly round-up of HR news and guidance

Receive the Personnel Today Direct e-newsletter every Wednesday

OptOut
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

“The findings for London are probably linked to wider evidence of a buoyant City job market, with frequent reports of growing employment and large bonus payments and high demand for office space,” according to the report.





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).

previous post
Department of Trade and Industry publishes new plan to cut red tape
next post
Flexible working: What does the Eddington transport study mean for HR?

You may also like

Graduate jobs this summer ‘will be toughest since...

25 Jun 2025

Employers struggling with soaring candidate deception

25 Jun 2025

UK engineering and manufacturing firms face hiring struggles

23 Jun 2025

Aldi to hire for 1,000 new supermarket roles

23 Jun 2025

Only a third of recruiters receive high-quality job...

20 Jun 2025

Number of new nurses from abroad falls by...

18 Jun 2025

Capita rolls out ‘agentic AI’ to speed up...

13 Jun 2025

Redundancies boost candidate availability at fastest pace since...

13 Jun 2025

Healthdaq: Shaking up health and social care recruitment

11 Jun 2025

Hiring confidence drops due to ‘reset’ in market

10 Jun 2025

  • Empowering working parents and productivity during the summer holidays SPONSORED | Businesses play a...Read more
  • AI is here. Your workforce should be ready. SPONSORED | From content creation...Read more

Personnel Today Jobs
 

Search Jobs

PERSONNEL TODAY

About us
Contact us
Browse all HR topics
Email newsletters
Content feeds
Cookies policy
Privacy policy
Terms and conditions

JOBS

Personnel Today Jobs
Post a job
Why advertise with us?

EVENTS & PRODUCTS

The Personnel Today Awards
The RAD Awards
Employee Benefits
Forum for Expatriate Management
OHW+
Whatmedia

ADVERTISING & PR

Advertising opportunities
Features list 2025

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Linkedin


© 2011 - 2025 DVV Media International Ltd

Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Maternity & paternity
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • Brightmine
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Free trial
    • Request a quote
  • Webinars
  • Advertise
  • OHW+