The KPMG and REC UK Report on Jobs for September 2026 found that permanent placements rose for the first time since September 2022, ending nearly four years of continuous decline, though the increase was marginal. Temporary billings expanded at the second-quickest pace in more than three years, and starting salaries grew at their fastest rate since January. Vacancies still fell for a 34th consecutive month, and candidate supply rose sharply as redundancies elsewhere continued feeding the pool of active job seekers. “Confidence is beginning to return to the market. Businesses have learned to adapt to constant global uncertainty,” said Jon Holt, group chief executive and UK senior partner at KPMG. Maxine Bligh, interim chief executive at REC, said “the job market is starting to power up again after employers had permanent hiring on the standby button” for years.
For talent teams, the signal is not that hiring has recovered, it is that it has stopped only shrinking. Vacancies falling for a 34th straight month while permanent placements finally tick up means employers are being more selective about which roles they commit to permanently, even as they compete harder on starting pay for the roles they do fill. That combination echoes the pattern HRTech Edition has tracked in last month’s UK permanent hiring data and in a broader look at how job cuts and new hiring plans have been rising together this year, both of which pointed to the same cautious, selective recovery rather than a broad rebound.
The original insight: rising candidate supply combined with rising starting pay is an unusual pairing, and it suggests employers are competing for a specific slice of higher skilled talent even while the overall applicant pool grows crowded with people made redundant elsewhere, a split market that generic vacancy counts will keep understating.
Source: KPMG
