A new research reveals over half of UK employers are keen on recruiting staff in the next three months. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIBD) said it was the first positive sign for employment prospects it had seen in a year. It conducted the research along with Adecco. About 56 per cent firms surveyed planned to hire in the first three months of 2021. The sectors with the strongest hiring intentions include healthcare, finance and insurance, education and ICT.
Gerwyn Davies from the CIBD said, “Our findings suggest that unemployment may be close to peak and may even undershoot official forecasts, especially given the reported fall in the supply of overseas workers.” The survey also found that the number of firms planning to make redundancies in the first quarter of 2021 dropped from 30 per cent to 20 per cent compared with the previous three-month period.
The most recent unemployment rate was five per cent, for September to November, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). That is an increase of 0.6 per cent over the previous three months, and means that 1.72 million people were unemployed. The worst hit sector was Hospitality, accounting for a third of the job losses, followed by retail. CIPD and Adecco found that only 36 per cent of hospitality employers were intending to recruit new staff.
