Pertemps

Pertemps, established in 1961, is the UK’s largest privately owned recruitment solutions provider, consisting of more than 200 branches.

Our national infrastructure and access to subject matter experts from across the group, gives us credibility across a broad spectrum of markets and this, coupled with our capacity to manage high volume, multi-site contracts, gives us the unrivalled ability to manage change, growth and continuous improvement.

We see the next six months as a period when we should expect to see significant movement and potential disruption as workers in the private and public sectors continue to push for salary increases to mitigate the significant rises in the cost of living.

There will be competitive tension between what happens in the public sector and expectations passed through to the commercial sector.

It is, perhaps, the start of an avalanche of expectations. What we do is give market comparisons and evidence the current market profiles for different roles, through our Meriden Media market insight team. We use this intelligence to advise clients on vacancies, current wages or salary levels, and to benchmark roles.

In this way, we can advise clients on where salaries are going currently, linked to the growing demands of cost of living hikes.

Due to the candidate short market employers are also forced to offer significantly higher pay rates/salaries to attract new employees. It now seems like Gazumping is not just a real estate thing these days. Payzumping is now very real.

As a business, we represent multiple sectors, so act as a barometer for the different market sectors in the UK. We either have clients in these sectors, or directly place candidates into the sectors, so have a true feel for what is happening.

We need government backing to help businesses support those not currently working to find a way back to the labour market.

The jobs market is seeing very high demand in every local area across a variety of industries. While it’s a very candidate-focused market, the abundance of adverts reflects the challenges firms are facing.

According to the Pertemps/CBI Labour Market Report in June 2022, further tightening labour demand. There were an estimated 1.3 million vacancies in the three months from March 2022 to May 2022.

However, there are some early signs that the jobs market could be on the turn, with hiring slowing and unemployment edging up. We’re continuing to see an increase in the number of active postings, a trend which has continued throughout the year, albeit a slowdown in hiring activity from previous months, indicating that employers are having difficulty in finding the talent they need in a tight labour market.

In our opinion, and through interaction with clients, we can see that, as low unemployment and the high demand for talent continues, especially in the private sector, it is creating a real tension that will cause salaries to continue to increase to address the demands of higher living costs.

Worker expectations will cause salary increases in an attempt to keep pace with inflation at a rate we have not seen for years. There’s going to come a time when expectation against affordability for businesses becomes critical.

While labour shortages are restricting firms’ ability to hire and grow, it emphasises the need for cross-collaboration between recruiters and businesses to make sure they get hiring right in this challenging market.

We need government backing to help businesses support those not currently working to find a way back to the labour market, developing more innovative and data-driven ways of understanding skills demand and to reform the skills system to equip people for the future.