In this report, as with the Recruitment industry trends reports since 2016/17, the REC has sought to reflect the broader range of services being offered by recruitment businesses in the UK. For the purposes of this analysis, the broader recruitment industry includes enterprises in three Standard Industry Classification (SIC) categories:
SIC 78109: Employment placement agencies (other than motion picture, television and other theatrical casting agencies).
SIC 78200: Temporary employment agencies.
SIC 78300: Businesses providing other human resources provision.
This includes enterprises placing permanent and temporary staff, as well as encompassing activities including RPOs, MSPs, direct engagement solution providers and umbrella companies. Calculations have taken precautions to avoid any double counting of revenues and placements associated with these services.
This year's industry-wide figures were calculated using:
Data drawn from a survey of 172 REC members, conducted between 31 August and 7 October 2022.
ONS data from:
the UK Business Counts register.
the Annual Business Survey.
the Index of Services time series.
Data drawn from the REC's JobsOutlook, based on a rolling quarterly survey of 600 employers/HR decision-makers conducted between 11 March 2016 and 29 September 2022 by Savanta ComRes.
Footnotes:
1 The UK's average GVA at basic prices for 2021 was £2,083.8 billion, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Available at: www.ons.gov.uk/economy/grossvalueaddedgva/timeseries/abml/pn2
2 Based on Index of Services data from the ONS. Available at: https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/economicoutputandproductivity/output/bulletins/indexofservices/august2022
3 REC JobsOutlook