How are job seekers affected by the economy?
The issue of recruitment has always been a complex one: getting the right candidate for the job is an important skill in the world of business. However, arguably the world of recruitment has become more complex than ever over the past couple of years due to economic troubles and rising numbers of unemployed people all looking for work.
For example, current unemployment figures are around 2.68 million and more than 1 million young people are currently not in work, which is seen as a particularly pressing problem. Also, redundancies in the public sector continue as cuts start to bite, and a survey from the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD) recently found that 31% of private companies intend to lay off staff this quarter, which will further add to the country’s unemployment woes.
Rising university fees are also having an impact. While it is true that there are fewer 17-18 year olds than there has been for a while, which has the potential to skew figures, the London School of Economics carried out a study that found putting fees up to £9000 may well put significant numbers of young people of going to university. In particular, they found that there is potential for there to be 5% fewer women and 7.5% fewer men.
All of this has a serious impact on job seekers, not least because it means there will be more of them competing for jobs, often in very competitive markets. For example, there is likely to be increased competition for apprenticeships and other training schemes as more young people find themselves unemployed and fewer people go to university.
Also, it is thought that geography can have a serious impact on recruitment and the ability of job seekers to find work – the CIPD survey mentioned above found that there is something of a north-south divide when it comes to recruitment, with the south of the country having much better employment prospects than the north. This is likely to exacerbate the problem in some areas, meaning that there are more applicants per job in the north than in the south.
One slight positive in terms of recruitment is that it means employers looking for staff are likely to have a wide range of people to choose from, which could be beneficial in terms of finding excellent candidates. However, it also means that many people with high quality skills are likely to get left behind – and with lots of people chasing jobs, young people looking for their first employment opportunity may well find things even harder without that valuable prior experience.
Overall, things might be tough in the jobs market right now, but there are still jobs out there – and someone has to get them. However, it seems that the increased competition when hunting for jobs is something that is set to stay with us for a while.