A new study of hiring intentions pegs the country for the world’s sharpest decline in hiring.
According to ManpowerGroup’s latest outlook survey, just 11% of British companies anticipated headcount to grow in the last three months of this year. The results compound current records which show demand among employers has already fallen to a new low.
The analysis included 40,000 companies across 42 nations, with the UK performing significantly worse than the next nearest. Overall, Britain was down 17 percentage points year-on-year, followed by Singapore, Hungary and Finland, which saw a drop of 9 percentage points each.
Looking at quarter-on-quarter decline, the UK experienced an 8 point drop, with Costa Rica and Colombia recording the next sharpest decline — 6 points.
According to ManpowerGroup, the UK economy has been impacted by ‘a perfect storm of cost pressures, AI disruption, and policy uncertainty’. Autumn’s budget, in which there is a significant chance of tax rises, alongside the government’s own advocacy of artificial intelligence-as-efficiency, were both major factors within this.
Earlier this year, the International Monetary Fund estimated 60% of jobs in advanced economies — for example, the UK and US — would be ‘exposed to AI’. Around half of those would be negatively affected by the technology, which is increasingly seen as a way to boost profitability and bottom lines by automating tasks which would previously have been performed by people.
Late-August, the UK’s Trades Union Congress published the results of a survey featuring 2,600 working adults. Job losses and changes to terms and conditions were the biggest causes for concern. However, half of respondents also said they were concerned about the impact of artificial intelligence on their position. The TUC went on to demand a step change in Britain’s approach to embracing new technologies.
Image: Michael Benz / Unsplash
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