Sixty-two percent of candidates in the UK now accept the same or higher salaries compared to 52 percent in 2011. This trend stays the same across the majority of Europe with Ireland, Germany, Denmark, Norway and Sweden the exceptions. In addition, the weeks to land a new position* has dropped from 31 weeks in 2011 to 30 weeks in 2012 across Europe, a more favourable trend than Asia Pacific’s 37 weeks, up in 2012 from 36 weeks in 2011.
Nicola Deas, Practice Leader of Career Management for Right Management in the UK and Ireland, comments: “The need for companies to take a strategic approach to managing their workforce has never been more critical in this turbulent global economic climate and we can see that for many, career transition support is still very much in demand across all regions. What is encouraging is the prospects for those given support in Europe is improving. Salaries are being matched or rising and weeks to land a new position is decreasing, which would suggest for the first quarter of 2012 there was a more positive outlook for candidates in a difficult market both in UK and across most of Europe.”
The report also revealed that candidates taking retirement is down from 4 percent in 2011 to 3 percent globally in 2012 suggesting the start of a new and growing trend following legislation across Europe to raise or scrap default retirement ages, as well as people deferring retirement due to economic pressures.
Nicola Deas adds: “We would not be surprised to see this trend continue across EMEA. Manpower’s World of Work Trends report identified the megatrends for the changing world of work and the demographic shifts brought about a declining ‘work-age’ population will mean that companies need to take seriously how they engage and retain older workers to avoid losing valuable knowledge and skills.”
