Economic pressure holding back companies from hiring new staff

Job vacancies in the UK have fallen for the eighth time in a row as companies blamed economic pressures for holding back on hiring new staff. The number of jobs on offer between December and February fell by 51,000 compared with the three months before. Despite the drop, the number of job vacancies remains high at 1.1 million.
There are also 328,000 more vacancies compared to the pre-pandemic period of between January and March 2020. The rate of economic inactivity - people aged between 16 to 64 who are not in work and not seeking a job - dipped to 21.3% between November and January. This was driven by younger people aged between 16 to 24 either getting jobs or looking for work. However, there are still nine million economically inactive Britons who are not part of the workforce either because they are students, have retired or are suffering from long-term illness.