Professional job vacancies increase

Professional recruitment firms now have 27% more vacancies on their books than this time last year, according to new survey data from the Association of Professional Staffing Companies (APSCo).

Beneath this headline figure, the latest data from APSCo reveals that growth in the professional staffing market continues to climb across all of the trade association’s core sector groups. Permanent vacancies across finance & accounting, IT, engineering and media & marketing are all up year-on-year (17%, 28%, 50% and 19% respectively).

The trade association’s data reveals that engineering and IT are outperforming all other sectors which can be attributed to a number of burgeoning areas., says the report. For IT, it credits a booming ‘app economy’ which has created an ongoing demand for developers and programmers, as well as the ongoing threat cyber-attacks are posing to businesses. For engineering, much of the jobs growth has been around the ongoing investment in infrastructure projects, such as road building.

APSCo’s figures also reveal that median salaries across all professional sectors were up by 3.1% year-on-year. This overall growth is characterised by notable fluctuations in terms of sector, with engineering and IT recording uplifts of 9% and 2.9% respectively. However, both the finance & accounting and media & marketing have both reported decreases year-on-year (-2.2% and -3.3% respectively).

Ann Swain, Chief Executive of APSCo, said: “As we approach the end of what has been an incredibly buoyant year for the professional staffing market, it seems clear to me that there is just one real challenge ahead. And that is the very real harm that talent shortages could do to organisations. It is not a new phenomenon that several sectors are already contending with a people crisis and unless businesses reassess their talent attraction strategies soon future growth could be scuppered. And at a time when the generalist recruiter is being replaced by ‘multi niche consultancies’, employers will do well to build solid relationships with these players that not only have access to global talent pools, but can also source the hard to fill vacancies in house teams simply can’t do ”.

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