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Global hiring outlook declines, but UK gathers strength

Employers are less confident about growing their workforce, suggests global recruitment firm Manpower’s latest report.

The Global Hiring Confidence Index showed that hiring intentions fell in 21 countries with the weakest sentiment evident across Europe, however the UK reported the most positive outlook for four years.

Certainties remained in the German labour market, while the weaker demand extended to China, which revealed the weakest hiring plans for three years.

The strongest hiring intentions were evident across Taiwan, India, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, and Panama.

The weakest were shown to be those in Greece, Italy, Spain, Slovakia, Slovenia and the Netherlands.

Jeffrey A. Joerres, chairman and CEO of ManpowerGroup, said: “Worldwide, businesses are hesitating with investments due to uncertainty and this includes their investment in talent.

“In Europe, more companies are telling us they will cut staff to adjust to the weaker demand. In fact, employers in seven European countries are reporting their weakest forecasts since we have been tracking hiring trends.

“But the current softening across global labor markets is much different than in 2008-2009. We are not seeing widespread doom and gloom, but rather more of a prolonged standstill in hiring. We do see a few bright spots.

“UK employers are reporting the strongest outlook in four years and the German market should remain steady over the next three months. In addition, job prospects in the U.S. remain stable, and perhaps now with the elections behind us the labor market can gain some traction.”

Prospects remained relatively unchanged across the Asia Pacific region, where hiring intentions were positive across all labour markets. Australia’s resource sector has slowed due to lower commodity prices, and in India demand appeared to have weakened from 12 months previously.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .