Business News Round Up (10/06/2024)
Northern jobs market sees fall in permanent roles, while temporary billings pick up
Recruitment levels for permanent roles continued to decline across the North West last month, while temporary billings showed renewed growth following three straight months of decline. These are the findings of the latest KPMG and REC, UK Report on Jobs: North of England survey for May. Meanwhile, vacancies for both types of roles rose again last month. Despite an increase in staff availability, starting salaries and temp pay rates both picked up as firms looked to attract suitably skilled workers. The report is compiled by S&P Global from responses to questionnaires sent to around 150 recruitment and employment consultancies in the North of England. Recruiters across the North of England signalled a further reduction in the number of staff placed into permanent roles, thereby extending the current sequence of contraction to just shy of a year.
Scottish private sector growth hits two-year high in May
The Royal Bank of Scotland Business Activity Index scored 55.2 in May, up from 53.8 in April, signalling that private sector activity expanded for the fifth month running – and at the strongest pace in two years. Supporting growth in activity was a sustained upturn in inflows of new work, although underlying data again showed that growth across Scotland’s private sector was achieved on the back of improving demand for services, which also helped mask the downturn observed in manufacturing. As a result, jobs growth and backlog accumulation was limited to service firms. In terms of prices, pressures eased in May after picking up notably in April. Scottish businesses registered a fourth successive monthly rise in inflows of new work in May. The respective seasonally adjusted index ticked up to a three-month high and was broadly in line with the UK-wide average.
https://www.insider.co.uk/news/scottish-private-sector-growth-hits-32984881
North West maintains encouraging growth in business activity, latest stats reveal
Business activity continued to rise at a solid pace across the North West during May, supported by improving demand conditions, latest Regional PMI survey data from NatWest showed. The upturn coincided with stronger confidence towards the outlook, which, in turn, contributed to a pick up in employment growth. Cost pressures, meanwhile subsided somewhat, after having spiked in April with the change to the National Minimum Wage. The headline North West PMI Business Activity Index – a seasonally adjusted index that measures the month-on-month change in the combined output of the region’s manufacturing and service sectors – registered above the 50.0 mark that separates growth from contraction for the fifth month running in May, coming in at 53.4. Although down slightly from a two-year high of 54.0 in April, the latest reading was still above the UK average of 53.0.
Hybrid work still a struggle for UK companies
Despite it being four years on from the start of the global pandemic, companies are still struggling to manage hybrid working. Hybrid work has become the overwhelming norm across industries which allow it, despite many CEOs and bosses trying to urge workers back to the office. A temporary holdfast from the pandemic, the phenomenon seems cemented in the working world. However, a survey commissioned by Lucid Software of over 2,500 workers across the US, UK, Germany, Australia, and the Netherlands in April 2024 found that over half (54%) of organisations still struggle to balance employee productivity. Further, 62% of firms continually changed their work policies in the past four years, oscillating from fully remote to in the office mandates, with hybrid policies peaking in between. In conjunction with these shifting tides is a strong (47%) resistance to change from employees.
https://www.digit.fyi/hybrid-work-still-a-struggle-for-uk-companies/