The quarterly survey of more than 1,000 employers shows that across all sectors just fifteen per cent of current job vacancies are proving difficult to fill. It also reveals that, outside a limited number of industries, UK employers continue to be able to recruit the workers they need without significantly hiking wages and that median basic pay rises of just 2% are predicted by employers in the 12 months to September 2016.
Steady supply of candidates
The Labour Market Outlook finds that the number of applicants per vacancy has remained steady over the past year, with average applications for jobs running at 25 for each low-skilled role, 15 for medium-skilled roles and 8 for highly-skilled roles. This suggests that in general, most businesses are seeing a steady flow of suitable candidates, despite unemployment falling to a seven-year low in October and despite a slight year on year increase (44% - 49%) in the number of employers reporting any hard to fill vacancies.
The most common employer response to hard-to-fill vacancies are up-skilling existing staff (48%), followed by hiring more apprentices (27%), recruiting migrant workers (23%) and raising starting salaries for hard to fill positions (22%).
Gerwyn Davies, labour market analyst at the CIPD, comments:
Skills challenges remain in certain sectors
Across all organisations reporting any job vacancies, the proportion of hard-to-fill vacancies is only modestly higher in the private sector (16%) than the public sector (11%).
Focusing on organisations reporting recruitment difficulties, the proportion of hard-to-fill vacancies is greatest in the manufacturing and production sector (24%), which includes industries such as construction and utilities, and private sector services (24%), which covers industries such as finance and retail.
Davies continues:
Employment growth remains robust
Looking ahead, the findings point to continued, robust employment growth. This quarter’s net employment balance – which measures the difference between the proportion of employers who expect to increase and those that intend to decrease staff levels – has decreased to +28 from +29 compared with 3 months ago. This shows strong employment growth with only a slight decrease in the number of employers planning to hire.
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