The Ashdown Group Jobs Index (AGJI) tracks the number of advertised permanent jobs at the Ashdown Group and the leading Internet job boards within the IT, Marketing, Accountancy and HR sectors. Data is compiled throughout the month and released in the first few days of the following month.

April 28th 2011:
Δ 9310 Δ
points

Change since March

Headline Figure - Jobs Index Falls in April

Extended national holidays are one of the largest influencers on the UK job market. Every year around Christmas there is a serious drop in hiring activity as the attention of Managers involved in the process are distracted from taking on new staff. In terms of working days alone, many businesses are only really ‘open for business’ for 2-3 weeks of the month.

This year, the UK has seen a similar phenomenon to the Christmas period during April. The combination of a Royal Wedding bank holiday coinciding with the bank holidays of Good Friday and Easter Monday saw employees racing to fill out holiday forms to take advantage of an 11 day period off work. Much has been written about the anticipated costs vs the increase in retail sales of the period. The CBI believes that the net cost to the economy was around £5bn.

We believe that the absence from business of hiring managers and those involved in the hiring process has had a negative effect on the job market. After peaking between February and March, the Ashdown Group Jobs Index fell 4.66 percentage points in April.

Has The Professional Services Job Market Gone into Reverse?

During April all of our sectors saw a drop in the number of permanent positions being advertised. The IT job market was most heavily hit with a 7.28% fall in demand. The Human Resources market fell by 4.84% with the Marketing and Accountancy sectors dropping by 2.87% and 0.37% respectively.

Short-term and medium range forecast from John Lynes, Director of the Ashdown Group:

'Historically April has been a good time of year for recruiters as new budgets are released in line with the fiscal year.

'The two main differences between this year and previous years are; a marked downturn in public sector spending and less working days in the month.

'The big question that anyone watching the employment market should now be asking is; can the shorter working month be fully responsible for the drop in demand or are we also witnessing a downward trend in hiring confidence? I am of the opinion that the job market had flattened towards the end of March and had already started to falter, we were probably likely to see either a small drop in April or at best a flat month without the Wedding and Bank holiday factor to consider. It would be unwise to read too much into the data from April as it has been such an unusual month.'

Conclusion: 

'All eyes are now on May to establish whether the demand curve continues in a downward direction or whether we will see an improvement.'

About the Ashdown Group Jobs Index

The Ashdown Group is a leading specialist recruitment agency operating in the UK

The Ashdown Group Jobs Index (AGJI) tracks the number of advertised permanent jobs at the Ashdown Group and the leading Internet job boards within the IT, Marketing, Accountancy and HR sectors. Data is compiled throughout the month and released in the first few days of the following month.

Analysis and commentary is provided by John Lynes, Operations Director of the Ashdown Group.

This data, comment and associated imagery is owned by the Ashdown Group. If you would like to reproduce any of the information or analysis please do so quoting us as your source and including a backlink.

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