LONDON, February 1, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

Reed Job Index  up 2 points to 123 in January

Job opportunities across the UK increased in January showing a 9% increase on the same period last year, according to the latest Reed Job Index report, which examines trends from over 8,000 UK recruiters.

In spite of the overall rise in new opportunities, job demand dropped back across several sectors, from Banking to Energy.  Consumer-facing sectors saw the largest falls, with Hospitality & Catering jobs dropping by 33 index points compared with December.  

However, rising demand for new workers in other job sectors balanced the falls with Marketing & PR, Estate Agency, Retail, Sales, Security, Charity and Media, all experienced rising demand.

Regionally, the North East and East Midlands showed January's biggest jobs growth, while demand in Northern Ireland recovered from its dip in December, boosting the Index as a whole.

Martin Warnes, Managing Director of reed.co.uk, comments on the Reed Job Index  for January:

"The first Reed Job Index of 2012 shows a jobs market that has grown 1% on December and 9% on the previous year with the majority of sectors showing growth on 2011. However, the Reed Jobs Index score of 123 is below the high point of November and the recovery in the jobs market continues to be a slow one.

"Nevertheless, year-on-year growth in new jobs of 9 per cent for January is encouraging and underlines the determination of UK businesses to ride out the economic storm."

January's Reed Job Index stands at 123, up two index points from December 2011 and 9% (10 index points) higher than January last year. The Reed Job Index is 23 per cent above the level of December 2009 when the Index's baseline was set at 100.

To promote the January release of the Reed Job Index data, employers are being offered a free trial to advertise vacancies at http://www.reed.co.uk/recruiter/content/trial.  

NOTES FOR EDITORS

• Each month the Reed Job Index tracks the number of new job opportunities and the salaries on offer compared to the previous month and against a baseline of 100 set in December last year.   The Reed Job Index is based on data from the UK's largest job board, reed.co.uk, which every day lists over 100,000 job opportunities from more than 9,000 recruiters across 37 career sectors throughout the UK.  

•  TheReed Job Index is compiled by data drawn from on-line job vacancies and job-seeker activity on reed.co.uk.  

•  reed.co.uk is the UK's largest commercial job board, with over 90,000 job opportunities from more than 8,000 recruiters at any one time.

•  Independent measurement by Hitwise verifies that reed.co.uk has the highest market share of visits for any commercial job board in the UK

•  reed.co.uk is part of Reed Global, the international recruitment group of companies

The full report  including analysis of jobs and salaries by job sector and UK region/country is available online  or via lynn.cahillane@reedonline.co.uk.

For further information (including exclusive quotes, in-depth statistics and trend data) please contact Lynn Cahillane on lynn.cahillane@reedonline.co.uk or call +44(0)20-7067-4582.

SOURCE reed.co.uk