Recruitment demand for school leavers is falling at the same time as employers are looking to hire migrant workers, according to a new study.
The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development’s (CIPD) latest study on skills and migration found that demand for migrant workers has reached a record high, with a quarter of businesses looking to hire migrants in the third quarter of 2011.
This is in marked contrast to their attitudes towards hiring young people. Only 12 per cent of the 1,000 employers interviewed for the survey said they were looking to hire 16-year-old school leavers in the three months to September 2011, which was down by 14 per cent on the same period last year.
Gerwyn Davies, public policy advisor at the CIPD, said: “Youth unemployment looks set to rise further amid employer concerns about the employability of young people.
“The migration cap is stemming the flow of skilled non-EU migrant workers on the one hand, but increasing the supply of EU workers with the other, which highlights the relative ineffectiveness of the cap in bringing net migration levels down.”
Davies added that employers need to take advantage of this.
