The Monster Jobs Confidence Index, published for the first time by jobs board Monster.co.uk and the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr), claims that workers and job seekers confidence in the UK labour market has dropped by 10 percent, from 77 percent to 67 percent. The report defines confidence as how an individual feels about their ability to find a suitable job in the short-term, realise their career potential and build a better future for themselves.

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A sudden reversal in the growth in the number of both EU and non-EU migrants in employment in the UK could hit employer plans to take on more staff and worsen skills and labour shortages, according to the latest quarterly Labour Market Outlook from the CIPD and The Adecco Group. While the net employment balance – a measure of the difference between the proportion of employers who expect to increase staff levels and those who expect to decrease staff levels – has remained extremely positive at +22 (compared to +23 in Q3 2018), among employers which currently have vacancies, seven in ten (70 percent) report that at least some of their vacancies are proving hard-to-fill, higher than in Summer 2018 (66 percent) and Spring 2018 (61 percent).  (more…)

A noticeable fall in the flow of EU nationals into the UK has coincided with a drop in the quantity and suitability of job applicants being reported by employers, the latest quarterly Labour Market Outlook from the CIPD and the Adecco Group has revealed. The data suggests that while the short-term outlook for employment remains strong, labour and skills shortages are finally starting to bite, with evidence that the number of applicants per vacancy has dropped across all roles (low, medium and high-skill) since summer 2017. This strong demand for labour is finally increasing recruitment pressures for employers, exacerbated by a ‘supply shock’ of far fewer EU nationals coming into the UK. According to the latest official data, the number of EU-born workers in the UK increased by just 7,000 between Q1 2017 and Q1 2018, compared with an increase of 148,000 from Q1 2016 to Q1 2017. This represents a fall of 95 percent and has fed into a tightening of the labour market. The report also found that while wage growth for the wider workforce is set to remain at around 2 percent for the foreseeable future, new starters and key staff may be more likely to be getting a salary increase.

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