Growth
2013 has been a positive year for the recruitment industry in the UK. This is the third consecutive year of growth and REC has even upgraded their medium term forecast to 7.3% predicted growth for the period of 2013/14. They even predict a growth of approximately a quarter by 2015! Turnover is also very much up. The total for the 2012/13 period was £26.5 billion which is a 3.1% increase on last year’s figures. All in all it’s been a successful year for the 64,669 recruitment consultants that are currently employed in the UK.
Temporary Recruitment
Placing temporary and contract workers was a clear money-maker for the industry. Turnover for the temporary market has been at its highest since 2002. This is unsurprising considering the fact that 4% of the UK’s workforce are in fact temporary workers.
Permanent Recruitment
Whilst the permanent market saw a larger rise in volume than the temporary market, it actually had less increase in revenue – only 2.2% in fact. Research shows that recruiters feel like this is down to a lack of suitable candidates. Many believe that there were too few candidates with the appropriate level of experience and even skill for the positions available. This lack of suitable candidates could in fact prove to be good news for recruiters as it is possible hiring organisations will pay more for a recruitment consultant to find them the appropriate person for the position.
By Sector
The sectors seeing the most staff placed include accounting & finance, secretarial/ clerical, computing/ IT and Professional/ managerial. Recruitment consultants saw themselves place many employees into technical positions during the 2013/13 period. Temporary positions filled also belonged to many of the same categories however industrial/ blue collar placements had the highest volumes. Check out the infographic from de Poel for more statistics.
