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Recruitment numbers up for first quarter of 2008

There was a report online on 16/05/08 that the number of jobs increased in the first quarter of 2008, it shows no signs of reducing in the second quarter. The survey was done by a marketing agency, who also compared this against the amount of business being undertaken in the marketing industry, discovered that the spend on marketing was also up in the same time, particularly with advertising for jobs and recruitment agencies.

The prediction of the report was that marketing online would increase by 25% over the next four years, marketing in hard copy and newspapers would decrease in the same time by about ten to 15 percent.

So what does this show us about the economy? Well, at the same time, there was an article in The Observer to say that parts of London had seen house price increases this year of up to 20%, and in other areas of up to ten to 15%.

I have also read that whilst decreases in values have occurred in flats and undesirable houses and locations, the remainder of the market stays just as buoyant as ever, with sales and purchases going unaffected by the so-called credit crunch.

I have to say that I can appreciate that part of the recession probably really is a recession, but in the back of my mind, I question who stands to benefit from ramping up the so-called credit crunch and making it something that it isn’t? Firstly, anyone who wants to invest in shares stands to gain from reporting a credit crunch, as one of the first things that gets affected is the share price of companies. Secondly, with fuel prices increasing, not only do the government gain but also the oil companies, who report record profits year after year after year with no sign of abatement. Thirdly, the food companies with reports of food prices going up, the suppliers such as Northern Foods and other similar companies obviously gain because they are able to increase their profit margin on the size that they make to the supermarkets and the supermarkets then add to their profit margins by simply blaming the cost of living and inflation on increasing their prices.

It basically becomes a free for all, with everyone who wants to benefit, benefiting from the credit crunch and those who are the consumers of all these services and products are the ones who stand to lose.

I have to say this spills into the legal recruitment world, because I have seen a lot of redundancies coming through in recent weeks but most of them are with companies who have aggressively expanded in recent times, or are bucket shop volume conveyancers or are jettisoning aged and senior staff, or staff who when you look at their CV, you don’t necessarily think immediately that you will place them. I have yet to see a good high quality CV with no blemishes from someone who has been made redundant in this recent round of redundancies.

So where does this leave us? Well, who knows where the so-called credit crunch will end up, but one expects eventually that the newspapers will run out of things to say about it and move onto more interesting subjects. Maybe that world events take over and other more interesting news stories come in that do not require constant referral to the word credit crunch. I am aware of such economies such as Japan suffering massive recessions for long periods of time, and whilst that may happen yet in the UK, I suspect that on this occasion, nothing much is going to happen.

Jonathan Fagan is Managing Director of Ten Percent Legal Recruitment (www.ten-percent.co.uk). You can contact him at cv@ten-percent.co.uk

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