Northeast Leads UK Jobs Growth

04 Feb 2013

The jobs market continued to grow rapidly across the UK last month despite fears of a triple-dip recession, and with even the depressed City of London perking up, recruitment companies have reported.

New job opportunities were up 3 per cent on December and up 12 per cent compared with a year ago, according to an index compiled by Reed.

It said social care, education and health showed the strongest growth. Among the regions, northeast England had the fastest increase, with 30 per cent more posts on offer than 12 months ago, followed by the northwest, Wales, West Midlands and Scotland.

In the City, Astbury Marsden said new jobs had trebled in the past month after hitting their lowest number since before the credit crunch. It estimated that 2,509 vacancies were created in January, up from 802 a year earlier.

During the boom before the collapse of Lehman Brothers as many as 13,000 City vacancies were being created every month. Mark Cameron, chief operating officer at Astbury Marsden, said the rebound was “from absolute rock bottom in December. We are still far from having turned the corner on the poor jobs market of 2012.”

Hopes of avoiding a triple-dip recession were raised by a survey by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales and Grant Thornton, showing business confidence at its highest since April-June 2011.

But a survey by the CBI employers group found that small and medium-sized manufacturers’ domestic and export orders continued to fall in the three months to January, while production also contracted for the third consecutive quarter. However, both domestic orders and output were expected to increase in the coming three months.

Source: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5087b5ae-6d8b-11e2-bc33-00144feab49a.html#axzz2Ju6eSt1l