The number of employers making job cuts in the US has more than halved in the second quarter of 2009, and the UK could soon follow suit, according to the Labour Market Outlook surveys from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) and the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) in the US.
The SHRM survey suggested that less than one in five US employers have planned job cuts in the second quarter of 2009, compared to 39% in the first quarter.
According to the CIPD survey, the number of UK employers planning to cut jobs in the second quarter of 2009 is almost identical to that of the first quarter in the US (40%).
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Gerwyn Davies, CIPD public policy adviser, said: “What’s now happening in the US jobs market offers hope that the rate of job losses in the UK will slow noticeably during the second half of this year.
“But we shouldn’t get carried away by talk of economic ‘green shoots’, especially when it comes to employment prospects. The jobs market may be contracting at a slower pace but it is continuing to contract all the same, with unemployment of more than three million on the way as we head toward 2010.”
