- Katja Hall, the CBI's chief policy director
Britain's labour market is on the mend, with the unemployment rate falling much faster to the threshold announced by the Bank of England. However, as economy strengthens more and more analysts start expressing their concerns about the sustainability of the economic recovery.
One the of the nation's largest recruitment companies, Manpower, said that winter floods have provided an additional boost to the labour market as more staff was hired to cope with the clean-up. Keeping it mind, next week's unemployment data will most likely surprise markets to the upside, as part-time jobs should increase substantially.
The boost, however, will be short-lived, and according to the Confederation of British Industry, the government should think about investing more in job creation, especially in science, technology, maths and engineering. According to the CBI, the U.K. is facing a "skills crunch" that can become a massive problem in a longer-term. The CBI employs more than 30% of the country's private-sector workforce, and they have expressed their concerns that almost a half of the companies are currently facing difficulties in hiring more staff with STEM skills. At the moment, the U.K. government is investing 385 million pounds in STEM to prepare more skilled workers, but it seems this is not enough.
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