Scottish Temp Jobs Market Continues to Grow

Scotland's private sector jobs market is booming, with temporary appointments rising at their highest level for four years while permanent job appointments grew at their best rate for a year.

According to the latest snapshot of the jobs market north of the Border from the Bank of Scotland, there was "a clear strengthening" of the market during April.

The BoS report said that all eight of the main employment sector categories had recorded a rise in demand for both permanent and temporary or contract staff last month.

And there appeared to be a slight easing of skill supply, although employers are still having to stump up for skilled workers as availability tightens.

BoS' Labour Market Barometer, a key index within the report, for last month showed an overall reading of 61.3 - a four-month high. That beat the wider UK reading of 60.7 and signalled "a further improvement in labour market conditions north of the Border".

Last month's barometer figure for Scotland was 60.3.

April's growth continues an unbroken pattern of jobs expansion on a month-by-month basis since August 2003. Scotland has also been largely outpacing the rest of the UK in the rate of expansion for most of the past two years, according to a recent report on jobs from KPMG/REC.