After two months of increases in both vacancies and placements, job opportunities for the professional white-collar sector, including IT, professional services, life sciences, finance, marketing, HR and engineering, decreased slightly in August with a 3% month on month drop in permanent roles and a 6% month on month drop in contract vacancies. However, interview activity, particularly in the last two weeks of August points to a potential continuation of the rises we have seen over June and July. That’s according to the latest monthly Recruitment Trends Snapshot report from The Association of Professional Staffing Companies (APSCo).
Daily tracking suggests a strong September
The data, provided by growth analytics platform, cube19, also tracks daily hiring activity which revealed an average 6% increase in interviews in the last two weeks of August compared with the first two weeks – a good indicator that a potential rebound in placements will follow through in the autumn.
Recruiter revenue shows double digit growth
The daily tracking also revealed that revenue from permanent placements grew by 17% in the last two weeks of August compared with the first two weeks and revenue from contract placements grew by 21%
Ann Swain, CEO of APSCo comments:
“The daily tracking data does seem to suggest that metrics are moving in the right direction. Feedback from our members suggests that recruitment firms are gearing up for a strong September and are encouraged by the activity levels they are seeing. Our sector5 and regional research suggests that professional sectors such as life sciences marketing and IT have weathered the crisis well.”
Joe McGuire, Global Sales Director at cube19 comments:
“We fully expected to see a slight reduction in most August metrics, not least because of holidays but also because there are fewer working days in August than July. The daily average for most metrics is continuing to increase including encouraging contract revenue numbers which have shown another month of double-digit growth.”
