When the Prime Minister announced a date for the general election yesterday, he said that the Labour Party was standing on behalf of the ‘Great Ignored.’ Now while he didn’t go into detail about who ‘The Great Ignored’ were, he could have been addressing any number of people; the politically apathetic, the unemployed or the small business owner who feels that both political parties ignore their wants and needs.
This year’s budget included many policies devised to help the small business and company formation sector. However, it failed to reflect the fact that most small business owners wanted the plan national insurance increase revoked. This has already had an impact on the employment market.
The SME sector is the biggest employer in the UK and yet any increase to the cost of staff has a dramatic impact on their bottom line. Regardless of the fact that the ONI announced that the number of people unemployed was down for the first time in a year, the number of employers seeking to actively recruit new team members has fell in March.
Christopher Baines, head of a recruitment firm, comments: ‘ At the start of the 2010 their was a consistent rise in the number of new job roles that had come onto the market, reflecting what we noticed as a general optimism about the future among our clients. However, the number of vacancies available has begun to drop noticeably.”