Rachel Reeves’ tax raid on business is already flattening job opportunities, with the sharpest fall in vacancies since the Covid pandemic. The Chancellor was warned her Budget had made employees more expensive and businesses would have no choice but to cut staff and stop hiring. And fresh figures today show bosses have wasted no time in pulling permanent recruitment adverts, with December seeing the steepest drop in job vacancies in well over four years.
A closely watched report by KPMG and REC, compiled by S&P Global, shows the job market is already shrinking, with companies explicitly blaming the rise in employer national insurance contributions . Some have been making redundancies in December, according to its survey of 400 recruiters. The figures come a day after stats showed the services industry was shedding jobs at the fastest pace in 15 years, excluding lockdowns.
READ MORE BUSINESS NEWS It risks making a mockery of Ms Reeves’ claims that her Budget protects the pounds in workers’ pockets — as they only have money if they can get a job. The REC/KPMG figures are all the more important as the UK’s official stats body has said that it will take another two years to fix its dodgy jobs data. Economists warn that the Bank of England is having to fly blind because of unreliable labour market information from the Office for National Statistics and it could be keeping rates high for too long when the economy is already in pain.
Neil Carberry, REC chief executive, sai.
