Thursday 13th June, 2013

According to the monthly jobs data report by the Association of Professional Staffing Companies (APSCo), the number of permanent vacancies in the market went up by more than two per cent last month. A similar increase in the number of placements was also recorded - which is the first time this has happened since September 2011.

Finance jobs make a come-back while engineering remains the most resilient of the professional sectors with skill shortages still dominating the picture.

The report compiled by Staffing Industry Analysts provides a snapshot of the UK’s professional recruitment market across all professional level sectors including financial services, marketing, engineering, accounting and IT.

John Nurthen, Executive Director International Development for Staffing Industry Analysts: "The latest data on accounting and finance jobs is encouraging but we’d need to see the positive momentum continuing for a couple of more months before we could be confident that the market is recovering properly".

Ann Swain, Chief Executive of APSCo comments: "This is obviously good news and the fact that official figures are telling us that full time work is still increasing faster than part time work and that overall vacancy rates are growing is evidence that things are slowly getting better."

She added: "In fact latest official data shows a rise of almost 9% year on year in vacancy levels and a fall in the jobseekers claimant count of over 4% - a figure that surprised analysts who were expecting no change."