Permanent workers preferred over contractors?

Permanent versus temporary employment. It is always a bit of a pendulum. Opportunities for contractors and freelancers wax and wane with the state of the economy like they do for any workers, but opportunities for self employment are particularly fine tuned to what is happening generally in the labour market.

The April situation seems to have favoured permanent positions over contract and other temporary placements according to a survey by the Recruitment and Employment Confederation.

The number of contract opportunities is down slightly and seems to be balanced by a corresponding rise in permanent placements according to the survey. A little worrying for contractors is that the drop in the number of new contracts, although only quantitatively quite small, was still the largest drop for three years.

There was better news for people looking for short term contracts only as the number of vacancies was a little higher in April.

The chief executive at REC, Kevin Green, said that the economy was still pretty fragile and the small changes in opportunities were a reflection of that fragility. He said that rather than take on more staff last year, the tendency was for companies to seek what additional capacity there was within the existing workforce and utilise that as much as possible.

The expectation is that there will be a moderate improvement both in consumer and business confidence later this year and this should have some influence on the amount of opportunities for both contractor and permanent staff placements.

The Agency Workers Regulations are beginning to have some effect on the way in which companies hire staff and this might be part of the reason for the pendulum shifting in the direction of permanent placements, according to Mr. Green.

He also said that the amount of confidence reported above might be affected by continuing reports of a possible double dip recession and the at present unknown developments in the eurozone.