According to the findings published yesterday, there were over 160,000 vacancies advertised in June - representing a slight decrease in volume for permanent roles compared to the previous month but remaining stable for temporary contracts.
The banking, insurance and finance sector continued to show the most positive growth, particularly for contract/temporary positions, suggesting that although staffing requirements are gradually increasing, employers still remain tentative about the outlook in the coming months.
The busiest sector was engineering and construction, where hiring activity remains robust, with only marginally fewer permanent and temporary jobs being created in June than in May. Accountancy saw the second highest number of new vacancies advertised.
This trend is reflected in figures for general staffing recruitment*1 (manual, administrative and non professional services roles), where banking, insurance and finance saw a significantly larger volume of new roles compared to other sectors, followed by engineering and manufacturing.
Steven Kirkpatrick, MD at Adecco, said: "It's very encouraging to see that recruitment volumes are holding up well, although the prevailing approach across all sectors still appears to be one of 'wait and see'. The next few months are going to be critical. If key sectors like banking, insurance and finance can continue to grow more strongly, then we could see related professional service sectors such as accountancy and law reaping the benefits, creating a knock-on effect across the board.
"While the engineering and construction sector appears to have reached a plateau, we may well see hiring activity pick up again as major infrastructure projects such as Crossrail come on stream and the Olympics deadline looms.
"With only one year to go until the London 2012 Games, we should start to see the benefits filtering through to the wider economy."
"As the finishing touches are put to the construction work, an army of other workers will be needed to fill positions ranging from catering, cleaning, security and administrative support to media, hospitality, tourism, sport, leisure and customer services. We're going to need to fill tens of thousands of new positions - whether they are directly involved in the Games or working for other companies who anticipate it will give them a boost in business. Some professional and technical posts will also be available."
The latest figures also reveal the public sector continues to feel the pain, unsurprisingly reporting the biggest drop in new job vacancies in June - a trend that is expected to continue over the coming months.
The media, new media and creative sector saw substantial growth in temporary recruitment. Although this is not currently being translated across to permanent roles, it suggests that the sector is beginning to feel more confident but remains cautious about the long-term outlook.
The Adecco Job Watch tracks the number of new job vacancies across all sectors, compared to the previous month.
The Adecco Job Watch is powered by mysalarychecker.com, which gathers data information from millions of UK job postings, which have been listed on a range of job boards, recruitment agencies, corporate websites and the associated listed companies.
