Hays flags weakening permanent jobs market as trading stays under pressure

Hays has told investors its permanent hiring market is weakening enough to keep trading under pressure, in a trading update carried by The Irish News.

The signal is worth attention. Hays is one of the largest publicly listed recruiters in the UK and Ireland, with deep exposure to professional sectors such as IT, construction, accountancy and engineering. When a recruiter of that scale describes its own pipeline as softer, it tells you what hiring managers are doing right now — not what they did three months ago.

What did Hays actually say?

The company's trading update signals that demand for permanent placements has cooled. That's the part that hurts most for recruiters: permanent fees carry higher margins than temporary ones, and a slump in perm volume pulls the income line down faster than a slump in temp work. Hays also warned that trading remains under pressure — meaning the weakness is showing up in fee income, not just in headcount.

What does a perm-market slowdown feel like for candidates?

For someone in active job search, this kind of signal usually shows up as:

• Longer time-to-offer
• More interview stages before a decision
• Salary growth flattening at offer stage
• Employers holding out for stronger shortlists before signing

Permanent hiring doesn't stop. It slows. But the bar tends to rise, and leverage shifts back toward the employer.

What about for hiring managers?

A softer perm market is a window for employers. Candidate availability rises, counter-offer pressure eases, and time-to-fill can shorten. The trap is pausing too long and missing the dip — hiring teams sometimes treat a cyclical slowdown as a structural shift, then find themselves understaffed when demand returns.

How reliable is a recruiter trading update?

These updates typically turn a quarter or two ahead of the official labour-market data. A weakening signal from one of the publicly listed recruiters — Hays, PageGroup, Robert Half and SThree are the main UK-listed names — usually foreshadows softer vacancy figures from the ONS or equivalent agencies in the next data print. That's why traders and economists watch them so closely.

What to watch next

The cleanest confirmation will come in Hays' next full interim results, which will put numbers on the trading statement's language. Until then, treat the warning as a pace-of-hiring signal: the permanent market is still open, but it's moving more slowly.