It seems the UK job market is in the midst of a race. In lane one is the downward pressure on jobs coming from the public sector. In lane two is the upward pressure coming from the private sector. The outcome of this race will determine whether the UK will emerge in a year or so’s time resplendent in its recovery, or will be wilting under an ever-rising rate of unemployment. A report from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) suggests that the competitor in lane two is getting off to a good lead.

So, imagine you are the top HR person at a company and you get a phone call from Ipsos-MORI saying we are doing a survey on behalf of CIPD, are you going to increase or decrease your staff levels over the next quarter, what would you say?

Please, enough of that. We meant what would you say if you are a polite person, who wants to help facilitate the survey?

Well, it seems that the percentage difference between those who said increase and those who said decrease was 11 per cent, at least that’s the finding of the latest Labour Market Survey (LMO) from CIPD.

But what gets interesting is if you drill down. The private sector net balance was plus 39, the public sector net balance was minus 49.

It all points to a good Q4 on balance, with the sectors doing well more than making up for the sectors doing badly.

What is a mite concerning, however, is what employers are saying about 2011, for it seems that when asked about employment plans for the next year, the net balance overall was a mere plus 1.

Dr John Philpott, Chief Economic Adviser at the Institute, had this to say: “What remains to be seen is how much of this good news is merely a pre-festive season surge in private sector jobs, or evidence of a sustained improvement that will continue to offset large scale public sector job cuts which, as the LMO survey shows, are already well underway and on a scale in line with the CIPD’s current forecast for total public sector job losses by 2015-16. With employers clearly far more cautious about the 12-month than the 3-month jobs outlook, it is far too soon to conclude that the UK will avoid a rise in unemployment in 2011.”

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