Jobs market | Over half of UK firms plan to hire staff

More than half of all UK employers intend to hire additional staff within the next three months, according to the latest study released this week by the CIPD, showing what it called the ‘first positive signs’ of employment expanding for over a year, as reported by the BBC.

According to the research, 56% of the 2,000 firms that took part in the working survey planned to hire new staff within the first three months of the year, with the strongest hiring intentions coming from the healthcare, finance, insurance, education and ICT sectors.

The news also seems to be positive for workers currently on the Government’s furlough scheme, with the volume of companies looking to make redundancies in the first quarter of 2021 dropping from 30% to 20% when compared with the previous three-month period.

The UK appears to be at the apex of the current employment crisis; according to the ONS, the most recent unemployment rate from September to November was five per cent – an increase of 0.6% over the previous three-month period, meaning 1.72million people were unemployed in this time.