Vile 2010?

“2010 will be Vile!”

As the room reverberated with the deafening silence of open mouths and speechless business folk quaking to the prospect of another year like the last he went onto explain that it wasn’t as we had perhaps feared.   His predication of a “Vile” economy was actually the latest in a line of economic acronyms and actually describes ‘Volatile Inflation, Limited Expansion’.  So what does this actually mean?

Well, most economic experts agree that UK inflation is set to rise markedly in the first half of this year and then continue to have a bumpy ride for the rest of 2010.  ‘Limited Expansion’ has a certain ‘Ronseal’ quality about it as it means exactly that – limited expansion in the UK economy.  So, although not quite as bad as ‘vile’ itself, this does not sound like 2010 will be an easy ride.

In my opinion, only the very brave would bet against the unemployment figures rising again between now and April this year.  And in terms of longer term damage the subject of ‘underemployment’ remains largely ignored by the UK media – ‘underemployment’ refers to those in work, but not at their desired level or capacity. 

In terms of jobs and recruitment in general the latest Recruitment and Employment Confederation official figures indicate that rather unsurprisingly the jobs market has been hit hard.  The Recruitment industry itself has lost 12% of its workforce in the last 12 months and has seen a 20% fall in volume. 

But, this is where the bad news ends!  Despite high unemployment figures and the prospect of economic recovery being ‘fragile’ I really think good news is just around the corner and there are undeniably some positives to come out of the last few months.  We have already seen a marked upturn in vacancies over the last 3 months which looks like a good omen for the rest of the year. 

We have also seen a large number of business surveys indicating that business confidence is indeed on the up, indicating that many already share our feeling of increased optimism.  We have also now seen unemployment fall for two consecutive months (still managing to keep under the 2.5million mark), whilst at the same time, we have seen the number of vacancies rise across the whole region.  And, let’s not forget that official government figures also show that for those becoming unemployed over 70% are in work again within 6 months (far more positive than the same figures for the last two recessions). 

So will 2010 really be ‘Vile’?  Well, I certainly don’t think so as we have seen quite a few reasons to be cheerful already.

for more information contact Nigel Brewster at nigel.brewster@sewellm.co.uk