Newspapers Face Massive Decline In Recruitment Ads

Recruitment advertising in the national press has fallen by 21.5% year-on-year, according to new research.

The latest monthly report from the Recruitment & Employment Confederation and Deloitte & Touche claims that newspaper job ads have reached an eight-year low.

A spokesperson commented: “The rate of decline has been decreasing over the past few months. However, there has been a big decline in the demand for advertising executive jobs at the upper end of the scale.”

There has been speculation that online job search engines and sites have been eating into traditional media’s share of the advertising budget. However, researchers could not assess its effect on the newspaper ad industry, commenting: “Although online advertising is clearly a factor, without separate research it is difficult to tell just how far online is eating into newspaper ad spend. It is also important to remember that many recruiters, who place their jobs online often put them in newspapers as well, especially if they are advertising the jobs on their own websites.”

On the bright side, the research showed that public sector job adverts were still strong and the gap between public and private sector job ads was narrowing. Although this will provide little comfort to financial papers, which depend on the corporate sector, newspapers which have invested editorially in the public sector, such as The Guardian, may escape the brunt of this downturn.

Recruitment & Employment Confederation: 020 7462 3260 www.rec.uk.com

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