The employment market in the UK is to face a further scaling back of operations, according to a study by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD).
Areas to face cuts will include hiring, offshoring, overseas recruitment and redundancies said the survey which canvassed the opinion of more than 1,000 employers found.
Office workers and other staff will face further deterioration in the final quarter of the year, the CIPD said, as a slow and painful contraction takes hold.
Measuring the difference in the number of employers who will be hiring and those who will be firing, the Labour Market Outlook employment index now stands at -3.
It is the second time it has fallen in succession from -1 for the previous quarter and the net balance is now at the lowest since last winter.
The public sector does not look set to grow in the next three months and even though it appears the private sector will, this will be slower than it has been recently.
Since the economic situation is so uncertain many businesses and companies appear to want to hedge their bets and remain almost static in terms of hiring and firing until things become clearer.
Gerwyn Davies, public policy advisor at CIPD, said: “Many firms appear to be locked in ‘wait and see’ mode, with some companies scaling back on all employment decisions against a backdrop of increasing uncertainty as a result of the eurozone crisis and wider global economic turmoil.”
Growth is needed in order for an improvement in the general market, however, so such stasis may stall any potential change.
Keeping work in the UK is also important for the country’s economy and offshoring has seen a drop in the last quarter from ten per cent to six percent.
The number of migrant workers being employed has been on the rise recently, yet fell from 25 per cent to 19 per cent in the last three months.
CIPD acts to drive HR globally and through individual organisations and a large part of that is through commissioning, authoring and distributing research on the matter.
Conditions do not look set to improve in the short or medium term future within UK labour markets, according to Mr Davies.
He said: “The good news resulting from this lull in business activity is that fewer employers are looking to relocate abroad or make redundancies.”
