Market trends | Rec industry made record £38.9bn

Despite a spate of rocky years for the recruitment industry, reports published this week by the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) have found that this uncertain landscape hasn’t hindered the market from growing in value.

According to the latest study, recruiters made more than one million permanent placements within the UK in the year to March 2019. On any given day, the industry put over 1.1million people in temporary and contract roles.

The result, REC’s ‘Recruitment Industry Trends’ report for 2018/19 shows that the industry’s turnover reached a new high of £38.9billion. £33.4billion of this was generated purely through the placement of temporary or contract placement, whilst £5.5billion was achieved through permanent placements.

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And whilst overall profits for the industry have grown, so has the number of firms operating within its space. In March of 2019, there were 31,140 firms in the industry, which demonstrates a two per cent rise from the previous year. The total number of staff rose by three per cent to 119,000 people.