Commercial Finance People, recruitment consultants and contributors to KPMG’s monthly ‘Report on Jobs’ (see excerpt below and link at page footer), reports a dip in the upward trend in recruitment activity with vacancies, staff availability and salaries all reducing slightly during September.  This is despite the fact that official figures released on Tuesday, show that the economy is growing by 0.8% in the third quarter – stronger than the 0.4% predicted by analysts. According to the Office for National Statistics, economic growth for the past 6 months has now hit 2% with the fastest pace seen over 2 consecutive quarters for 10 years according to the ONS

As might be expected, KPMG’s latest Report on Jobs shows a wide disparity in recruitment activity within different sectors and further results from the ONS reported a wide divergence in trends between industries. On the one hand, a number of private sector categories which saw sharp downturns in the recession have since posted strong recoveries.

These include IT & communication and finance & insurance, which had the highest vacancy levels per thousand jobs in the three months to August. Hospitality, personal services, retail and professional vacancies have also recovered well and are among the fastest-growing sectors.

In contrast, those job categories most exposed to government spending cuts have seen deteriorating vacancy trends. By far the hardest hit so far has been public administration, which saw a 65% year-on-year drop in vacancies in the three months to August and the lowest ratio of available positions to existing jobs of all categories.

Education and healthcare vacancies also showed negative year-on-year changes, although in the case of the latter the fall was only slight. Meanwhile, the construction sector is a notably weak performer, reflecting its exposure to squeezed public sector budgets and still fragile commercial development activity.

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Report on Jobs contributed by Markit