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Jobs market Aug 22

ended 15. August 2022

The latest (un)employment data is out tomorrow morning at 07:00. If you'd like the chance to see your views in the local and national media, please answer the following Qs:

  • Are employers confident right now about hiring or are they battening down the hatches?
  • Who holds all the cards right now? Employers or employees?
  • Are employees, in your experience, asking for pay rises to keep up with inflation, and by how much on average?
  • Are companies, many of which are under pressure for no end of reasons, struggling to offer pay rises?
  • Do you think unemployment is going to rise during the latter stages of 2022 and in 2023?
  • Are employees still demanding flexibility or are they increasingly happy to have a job as inflation and interest rates soar?

Any other thoughts or insights on the jobs market, jot them down. Please don't write War and Peace.

8 responses from the Newspage community

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Samuel Mather-Holgate
Independent Financial Adviser at Mather and Murray Financial
We are in the calm before the storm. Although confidence in the workplace might be drying up, there are still plenty of vacancies and the number in employment is high. However, we all know what's coming. A recession is now only a short time away and it might last for a long while. This means that employers are starting to carefully consider hiring staff and, in the medium term, might be thinking about reducing head count. As is always the case, retaining good talent is important. So, if you are good at your job and willing to ask, you could be on for a bumper pay rise this year. Employers have offered additional perks to employees over the last year, as filling vacancies following covid was difficult, and these perks look like they are here to stay. Whether that is working from home, hybrid working, flexible benefits or discount vouchers for shopping. Over the next 12 months I expect unemployment to rise as the recession bites. The severity of this will depend on what support the new Prime Minister puts in place.
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Scott Gallacher
Director at Rowley Turton
With the current labour shortage, employees are definitely holding all the cards at the moment. However, I'm not sure for how much longer. The cost of living crisis is clearly going to restrict people's discretionary expenditure, which, in turn, will hit many businesses (retail, hospitality, leisure). Consequently, we could significant job losses soon. However, this raises the question of why the Bank of England recently increased interest rates. Arguably, they are concerned that the tight labour market will cause longer-term inflation via wage rises. And, by raising interest rates, they reduce consumer demand and the need for labour. It could therefore be argued the Bank of England has determined that potentially hundreds of thousands of job losses are a price worth paying to bring inflation under control.
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Sam Alsop-Hall
Chief Strategy Officer at Clive Henry Group
We are now seeing a slowdown in the job market as people seek stability and are wary of moving jobs and being in probation periods or their first year of employment when they are more vulnerable to being let go. This trend has caused a slight drop in job market confidence and has also seen employers begin to push back on working from home and set standards around number of days in the office. Many employers are seeing staff directly asking for pay increases to help them navigate the cost of living crisis and inflationary pressures, which are contributing to record salary falls in real terms. However, many companies are facing the same headwinds and simply don’t have the profits to be able to increase wages and salaries right now. The balance of power is beginning to shift back from employees to employers once more, as having a stable and reliable income starts to be more important than flexibility and progression for many in the workforce. This will only exacerbate the skill shortages in the market and cause further headwinds for companies as they enter what the Bank of England predicts to be a protracted recession.
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Kieran Boyle
Managing Director at CKB Recruitment Ltd
We have not noticed any slowdown in the jobs market. Employers are still struggling to find experienced staff, and we do not envisage this changing anytime soon. Candidates are still in the driving seat, which is pushing up salaries and enabling them to have their pick of employers. It's hard to know if increased salaries are linked to inflation or the candidate shortage in the UK, but it's likely to be a mixture of the two. We also do not think unemployment will rise, as there are just so many vacancies available in the UK jobs market currently and candidates are still keen on flexible/hybrid working and we see no sign this will change.
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Louise Skittrall
HR Expert at Robinson Grace HR Consultancy
The market continues to be candidate led, with sparse numbers of applications for jobs. The knock on effect is that candidates who are actively job seeking can pick and choose employers that are offering the hybrid or remote options they are increasingly seeking since the pandemic. Working at home during Covid has opened people's eyes to the possibility and the benefits for many of reduced commuting time, and a better work life balance. Without these sought after elements on offer, employees are choosing to stay put in their current job. What we are seeing in the marketplace is a greater number of resignations being refused, counter offers on the increase and more focus placed on employee engagement and retention than ever before. Not only are employers battling a financially competitive market place when searching for new hires, but they are having to flex the overall package on offer and polish up their employer value proposition to entice new hires and ensure that current staff are proud to remain employed, and recommend their employer to others. We are even experiencing employers being reticent to tackle serious performance issues with existing employees due to the difficulty of recruiting a replacement. Issues which may have previously been considered gross misconduct are being viewed against more lenient criteria rather than moving to dismissal.
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Katherine Steiner-Dicks
Founder at BuzzVestor Media
The number of layoffs by tech startups in the US increased eightfold in Q2 2022, according to some new figures. This latest layoff move by tech companies was in an effort to have their books in good order in case the markets enter into higher interest rate territory. Cold, I know. Their rationalisation is buffering inflation's higher costs. While the US is usually more reactionary than its British and European cousins, the tech markets are intrinsically linked so start listening to any chatter and get your CV updated. Look out for new job opportunities in the growing "new" creator economy or consider taking on a side hustle or going freelance part-time in this sector with your skills set to test the waters. Job sites like True Up post jobs from all over the world in this segment.
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Gillian Jones-Williams
Managing Director at Emerge Development Consultancy
Despite everything that has been going on we are still hiring and gave our staff a larger than average inflation pay rise this year (7%), however we are a small company so can contain those overheads and have worked hard to recover from Covid losses. With cost of living rises it was making it too difficult for them to make ends meet. We are still being flexible with staff so it feels quite balanced but generally, I feel that if a recession hits unemployment will start to soar. There are so many variables at play and so much uncertainty it is difficult to predict how 2022 will end.
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Karen Watkins
Founder at Rowan Consulting
There is a waning confidence among employers as they wait to see what happens in the potentially turbulent months ahead. A first negative quarter of GDP growth will invariably make many employers stop and think about their hiring. For employees, yes, it remains a buoyant market but the numbers are deceptive, the high job vacancies are due to a widening gap in some areas such as retail and health and social care as a result of the flood of candidates leaving these industries and trades. My concern is that business owners are trying to fix individual problems in recruitment with no clear view or path on the wider picture. Paying higher salaries is high stakes stuff as we enter a period of extreme economic uncertainty. Doing so may cause companies serious problems later down the line if their revenues are hit.