Jobs listed with Reed Recruitment in the three months to June were down by about a quarter compared to the same period 12 months ago.
Mr Reed told Bloomberg: “The alarm bell is sounding a lot louder now than it was, as the labour market is beginning to loosen.
“This continued contraction in job postings, which have been falling since this time last year, therefore suggests that a recession may well be imminent.”
Mr Reed’s downbeat forecast contrasts with the Bank of England’s prediction Britain will narrowly avoid a recession this year.
Jack Kennedy, UK Economist at the global hiring platform Indeed, told Express.co.uk: “While the labour market is gradually loosening, it’s still one of the tightest of the last 20 years with just 1.3 unemployed people per vacancy. That’s sustaining wage growth at a rate that’s incompatible with the Bank of England’s two percent inflation target.
“The key question for the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is whether the labour market is cooling fast enough to bring down wage growth without needing to bring about a recession through further monetary policy tightening.
“But the unemployment rate did notably tick up 0.2 percentage points to 4.0 percent in the three months to May (the single-month unemployment rate for May climbed to 4.3 percent), suggesting that Bank decisions are starting to impact the labour market.”
Mr Kennedy added that redundancies also rose in the latest period, though they remain low by historical standards. Vacancies fell by 85,000 in the second quarter of 2023 – the twelfth consecutive period to see a quarterly fall since May to July 2022.
But at 1.034 million, vacancies remain 25 percent above their level on the eve of the pandemic, according to the economics expert.
The latest figures show Britain’s economy contracted in May after businesses across the country closed their doors for King Charles’s Coronation.
Gross domestic product (GDP) declined by 0.1 percent for the month, after increasing by 0.2 percent in April, the Office for National Statistics said. Analysts were expecting the economy to shrink slightly more with Deutsche Bank expecting the monthly GDP decline would be 0.3 percent while Investec Economics had predicted 0.5 percent.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt dismissed the suggestion May’s economic contraction could be the start of a recession.
He told broadcasters: “We recognise it’s a difficult time for businesses up and down the country and we want to be growing at a faster rate.
“But in order to do that we have to tackle inflation, that is the battle that has to come first and we will focus all our energy on that because if we can tackle inflation, we can unlock the key to much healthier growth going forward.”
Mr Hunt added: “I don’t think you can interpret too much from one month’s figures.”
