New research published in Totaljobs’ Hiring Trends Index reveals that the easing of Covid-19 social restrictions in the UK has triggered a surge in recruitment activity within firms over the last three months.
Outlining the findings in the Hiring Trends Index, CityAM reports that 41 per cent of businesses upped their recruitment activity in the second quarter of 2021 to meet rising demand.
This encouraging data follows the publication of the Office for National Statistics’ latest UK labour market numbers, which showed that employers added 356,000 new employees onto payrolls between May and June, indicating that the jobs market is mounting a recovery.
Among the most active recruiters over the previous three months were businesses in the finance and technology sectors, followed by medical and health firms.
48 per cent of media, marketing and PR companies also sought to take on more staff, with businesses likely poised to increase their marketing spend to cash in on consumers making ready to spend savings accumulated during the lockdown.
Meanwhile, 48 per cent of leisure and hospitality companies stepped up their own recruitment drives, coinciding with rising consumer spend in venues such as pubs and restaurants which were able to reopen in May in line with the government’s roadmap out of lockdown.
The figures suggest that although there was an initial delay to the lifting of almost all social restrictions in England, which was pushed back to July 19 from July 21, the hiring plans of a lot of firms were not significantly hampered.
Totaljobs CEO, Jon Wilson, commented: “As Covid-19 restrictions come to an end, we expect to see a flurry of activity in the months ahead in terms of recruitment and business planning, as highlighted by the actions employers plan to take in the second half of the year.”
Wilson added that two in five companies upped their recruitment activity in the second quarter of 2021, compared with just one in four in the first quarter.
However, Totaljobs urged caution in the face of such strong signs of recovery, with its research also suggesting that a drop-off in the scale of firms increasing their recruitment activity may be forthcoming in the next quarter.
Indeed, Totaljobs’ data suggests that just 29 per cent of businesses expect their recruitment activity to go up in the next three months, with concerns lingering over the proliferation of the Delta variant of Covid and whether social restrictions could make a comeback following the next government review in September.
