According to the Recruitment and Employment Confederation, employers applied job vacancies for the first time in January. More than thousands of engineering and construction were compared with few number of position in hotel staff as the agencies which applied 400 recruitments as reported by the Recruitment and Employment Confederation and KPMG.

The key points of the report were: 

- Modest increase in permanent appointments recorded

- Temp billings down slightly 

- Candidate availability rises, but at slower rate

- Subdued pay pressures 

Chief executive Kevin Green said "There are glimmers of hope for the UK jobs market, The Report on Jobs also follows better than expected services data from the Purchasing Managers' Index last Friday, which suggests that confidence is growing amongst consumers as well as businesses." And he added "This is the first positive indicator for some time that employers are looking to hire staff despite the ongoing weakness of the economy,"

Bernard Brown, Partner and Head of Business Services at KPMG said the data was a welcome surprise. “Given the continued impasse surrounding the Eurozone and the knock on effect this has on business confidence, it is a welcome surprise to see a modest increase in the number of permanent job placements across the UK," he said. "Sadly, though, the number of people hoping to fill these vacancies continues to rise and, with unemployment benefit claimants up for the 10th month in succession, the competition to be the right candidate in the right place is tougher than ever." He added. 

The latest official data cleared that unemployment in Britain reached its highest level in more than 17 years in the three months to November. However, a much smaller than expected number of new benefit claims in December provided some hope that the labor market downturn may be leveling out.