When the Recruitment & Employment Confederation speaks, people listen – and the REC says that the next quarter will be a good one for contract workers.
The REC is one of those industry bodies that usually knows what it’s talking about. It’s known for some very spot-on research findings, and if their latest JobsOutlook survey can be relied upon – and it most likely can be, if you ask me – freelancers and umbrella company contractors are going to be very busy indeed.
The REC’s latest survey discovered that more than one out of every two business owners are keen to increase the number of interim workers over the next quarter. The impetus behind the new move is tied to increased levels of demand, and employers looking to remain viable in the emergent economic recovery can’t rest on their laurels – they need to get to work more or less immediately in order to succeed.
For what it’s worth, this is fantastic news for anyone who enjoys self-employment. All too much of the time it can be feast or famine for contract workers and whenever there’s a generous opportunity like this it reaps huge rewards to pounce immediately. Freelancers and contractors have even more going for them in that they are specifically in demand by employers – while the permanent employment market still labours under the crippling effect of the skills shortage, which has seen qualified Brits become more than a little thin on the ground when it comes for high-skill positions, interim workers are by and large much more experienced and skilled. You don’t remain successful working on your own unless you can produce results for clients on a consistent basis, so temporary workers that specialise in project-work are in the perfect position to benefit from employers’ inability to source suitable permanent employees from the nation’s workforce.
Will this trend continue past the next quarter? That remains to be seen, but industry experts seem to be quite confident that things are only going to get better. Even the skills shortage may soon be a thing of the past as more employers increase the number of positions suitable for trainees or new graduates, which I think is just icing on the cake. If you ask me, it looks and feels like the economic recovery is absolutely humming along nicely – and it’s about bloody time!
