New figures on the current state of recruitment in the UK have shown that many companies are still cautious about taking on new staff, due to the still volatile economy.

The statistics in the latest Report on Jobs, from the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) and KPMG, have shown that demand for new employees saw its slowest rate of expansion since November 2010.

The report’s figures are measured on a scale on which anything above 50 indicates growth. The figure for last month indicated that the number of vacancies rose to 54.3 – but that was down from 55.9 in June.

KPMG partner, Bernard Brown, said, “Employers across all sectors remain cautious about hiring new staff. The key reason for this is the uncertain economic outlook with domestic demand being weighed down by government cutbacks and falling real wages, while exports and investment are not strong enough to take up the slack.”

His colleague at the REC, Kevin Green, said, however, that there was still reason to be optimistic, and the figures were actually just one per cent off their pre-recession high-point.

“These figures show that the jobs market is continuing to perform well despite general weakness in the UK economy,” he explained. “We have now had two years of continuous growth and employers are still continuing to hire staff, albeit not in the numbers needed to radically reduce unemployment.”