Jobless recovery ‘threatens employment market’

An expert has suggested that the prospect of a jobless recovery has created considerable unease among British businesses and could have a disastrous impact on the country's jobs market.

Recruitment Society chairman Steve Huxham admitted he had been surprised by the findings of a recent poll from the Federation of Small Businesses, which showed that 10.4 per cent of small companies are planning to lay staff off over the next three months.

"From what I've seen, I don't think small firms are thinking about reducing staff numbers," he explained. "The biggest threat to the employment market at the moment is a jobless recovery."

Mr Huxham called on the coalition government to do more to encourage small to medium-sized enterprises to generate new jobs and criticised the current tribunal system as "not fit for purpose".

Get our essential weekday HR news and updates. Facebook This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. Work Email Keep up with the latest in HR... This field is hidden when viewing the form Optin_form This field is hidden when viewing the form Optin_date Year Month Day This field is hidden when viewing the form Batch_Newsletter

Figures released by the Office for National Statistics earlier this week showed that employment has increased by 241,000 throughout the year so far, but remains down by 270,000 on 2008.

Posted by Cameron Thomson