Salaries for permanent jobs in UK rising fastest since 2007: report

Starting salaries for permanent jobs in the UK have increased at the fastest rate since July 2007, according to a new report.

According to the report, published by the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) and KPMG, while permanent salaries and job vacancies had both increased, there had been a sharp decline in candidate availability during the same period.

According to the report, demand for public sector positions grew faster than private sector roles during March.

REC director of policy, Tom Hadley, said the trend of growth in people finding jobs across all industrial sectors and regions continued.

Starting salaries and hourly pay rates were up as employers battled to entice the talent they needed, he said, adding that as real wages started to increase across the job market, people would start to feel better off, www.localgov.uk reported.

He, however, said worsening candidate shortages meant that the number of people available to fill both temporary and permanent jobs was falling at the sharpest rate in nearly a decade. He said, the UK had a core group of long-term unemployed people whose skills did not fit with current vacancies and were unable to access the job market.

The research also revealed that wages for temporary workers increased at the slowest rate in five months in March.

International Business Times quoted Hadley as saying that the trend of growth in people finding jobs across all industrial sectors and regions continued.

Starting salaries and hourly pay rates were up as employers battled to entice the talent they needed. He said, as real wages start to rise across the job market people would start to feel better off.

Permanent staff availability in the UK fell at the sharpest rate since October 2004, while the latest drop in contract staff availability was worryingly the fastest in almost 10 years.

The demand for staff, however, continued to increase at a marked pace in March, with the rate of expansion only just less than January's 15-½-year high.

According to Bernard Brown, partner and head of business services at KPMG, the data showed that demand for staff continued to rise.

Marginally up on the figures for February, the latest data suggested that engineering, construction and IT were the sectors hungriest for talent, he said.

Ii is all good news, but the next step will be for candidates to put themselves forward for the role on offer, something they still seemed unwilling to do, he added.