Umbrella company contractors may be relieved to hear that the number of job opportunities and the size of monthly salaries increased last month.
The Reed Job Index showed a sharper rise in February job opportunities than had been recorded in January. The Index looks at trends from more than 8,000 recruiters in the UK and February’s Job Index reading showed 140, the highest level since the launch of the Index in December 2009.
The recruitment sector reached its highest ever score of 116, suggesting that agencies are hiring in anticipation of increased business. The accountancy, construction, engineering and scientific sector also demonstrated buoyancy.
Wage increases in the consultancy, banking, retail, customer services and training sectors helped push the Salary Index up to the level it was 23 months ago.
Northern Ireland and the North West of England had the largest month-on-month increases in the amount of new available opportunities.
Reed.co.uk’s managing director, Martin Warnes, commented on the results saying that it was too early to say growth was returning. Before that can happen, we need job creation to carry on strengthening over the next few months.
Tesco will be one company contributing to job creation. The supermarket giant recently announced it would create 20,000 new store-based jobs in the next two years. It also intends to allow external candidates to apply for a place on its apprenticeship programme.
The 3,000 apprenticeships initiated by the company last year went to existing staff, but now Tesco has decided that as well as increasing internal acceptances, it will throw the scheme open to external applicants and create a total of 10,000 apprenticeships over the next couple of years.
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