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The drive towards agency employment – why employers favour agency staff |
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Written by Sonia McKay
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Monday, 23 June 2008 |
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Over the last decade, the use of temporary agency work has increased markedly. Estimates by the European Confederation of Private Employment Agencies for the UK suggest that in 2005 there were some 6,000 officially designated employment agencies operating through 14,400 branches and sourcing 1.2 million workers a day (5% of the national workforce). These temporary agency workers made up 86% of all workers on a temporary contract, and the sector turnover was calculated at £24bn or 2% of GDP. And these figures themselves are likely to be an under-estimate of the number of agencies and the size of their GDP. In general it is only the larger, well-established agencies that join the employment agency federations. Small agencies are much less likely to take up membership of bodies like the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC), but their presence is increasingly evident in the High Streets of most UK towns. Their growth can also be evidenced by the available VAT data, which shows that over 17,000 bodies operating as employment agencies are VAT registered, suggesting that the number of agencies and consequently the numbers of agency workers is much higher than the official figures demonstrate. This growth in agency work in the UK has depended on a variety of dynamics, ranging from the nature of national regulation to changes in the labour process and industrial structure.
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