By Kristy Dorsey
The pace of hiring activity in Scotland lost some momentum during October as a lack of available applicants tempered the impact of strong demand for staff.
Following the summer’s record upturn, the latest Royal Bank of Scotland Jobs Report found that both permanent placements and temporary billings continued to rise, though the rates of increase eased to the slowest since March and April respectively. Inflation rates of both starting salaries and temporary wages remained close to their all-time highs.
The recruiters surveyed reported further steep declines in the supply of both permanent and short-term staff, along with a sharp increase in vacancies. Strong demand, Covid and Brexit were cited as the main barriers to finding suitable staff.
“Permanent placings and temp billings continued to rise steeply, but the rates of increase moderated from September,” Royal Bank chief economist Sebastian Burnside said. “This was in part due to issues finding candidates, as staff supply dropped at a near-record pace in October, as well as strong demand for workers – reflected in vacancy growth running close to recent peaks.
READ MORE: Brexit’s labour market legacy bears down on growth
“With the labour market running hot, supply and demand imbalances may limit firms’ abilities to fill roles in the months ahead, while also pushing firms to up their pay offers in order to secure or even retain staff.”
The availability of permanent candidates fell for the ninth month in a row, while that of temporary candidates declined for the eighth consecutive month. With many companies gearing up for the festive season, the reduction in temporary staff accelerated from September and was among the steepest on record.
Permanent starting salaries rose for the eleventh time in as many months, easing only slightly from September’s all-time peak. Average hourly pay rates for short-term staff extended current sequence of inflation which began in December 2020.
The rate of uplift in demand for permanent staff was the second-quickest on record, running close to August's peak.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here