How’s It Looking Out There?

Wow OK, so that was a lot in a short space of time…

• UK General Election, UK Budget revealed… whatever you think of the Starmer drama and RR’s infamous budget – that in no unnecessary terms will not increase tax on working people (side eyes) – we have a view of what we are dealing with.

• US General Election – same story, whether you’d prefer to duck Donald or if DT is your bag then at the very least we now have a clear forecast of which way the wind is blowing – in the direction of a loud trump.

But what has it meant for the finance and accountancy market?

Well, very few of the FDs / CFOs or MDs I speak to have loudly cheered any of the above.   Few have loudly jeered either in reality.  It’s been more of a resigned “it is what it is” response in the main.  They’ve reworked budgets and the reality is that the summary seems to be prices will go up.

Disconcertingly there are some murmurs of having to look at whether chunky investments will go ahead, whether new projects will still get the green light… but not many have reacted with “we really need to look at headcount with a red pen”….

…Just yet…

In terms of the affect on the job and candidate market, at the mid-market – not a massive amount of dramatic change…  management accountant, finance analyst, commercial accountant, FP&A and financial accounting roles have all been pretty much BAU.

Vacancy numbers from the REC and KPMG reports are on the slide… but they are hovering at around about the 15 year average – so it’s  gloomy and clouds have gathered to obscure the sunshine we’d gotten used to… we’ve put away the factor 50 and grabbed a warm coat…

— but it’s not doomsday as yet.

At Finance Manager / Financial Controller / Head of Finance and certainly CFO / FD level there has been far more caution.  And it’s at the point on the barometer that I would describe as slightly unsettling.

That caution has come from both sides of the recruitment fence – passive candidates have leaned towards holing up with the devil they know and many clients have pushed recruitment down the line whilst the political balls were hanging up in the air.

Now the juggling has stopped it will be interesting to see what happens in Q1 2025…

Caution is frustrating for recruiters…. and when it happens for a while it can become unnerving….. but if you watch (and experience) those cycles over time they always create a coiled spring.

• There will be candidates who can’t ‘sit tight’ any longer.  There will also be businesses that have waited too long and are aware they need to pull the trigger.

But the tricky bit of the current equation is the undeniable economic uncertainty….

How an economy will fare is always an unknown but at the moment it feels easier to predict a downturn than to forecast celebrations.

In the main, there’s a sense that large volumes of the business world don’t quite trust the government to navigate the choppy waters toward the island of economic boom.

The glass half empty pessimist in me worries that too much more pressure will lead to job losses.  But many of the businesses I know run so lean that I can’t see how losses wouldn’t impact ability to actually function…

The consensus seems to be that it feels 50:50 in terms of whether we may be heading into steady and stable growth or crashing into recession.

So there’s a sense that the holding pattern remains a decent course of action for the time being.

BUT on a positive:

• The noises from PE are really positive, many have sat on their hands and next year is the time they feel that they will get firmly off the fence and get their treasure chests opened.
• Whatever happens the savvy finance person knows that this next 12 months could be an M&A free hit.  There will be investors that make big dollar through targeted acquisitions this year. Fact.
• There’s confidence from many FDs I speak to that the increased labour costs from the budget will land in pricing increases… but that those increases will (rightly or wrongly!) be absorbed by customers without too much grunting.
• Many businesses have become more aware of ‘recession-proofing’ than pre-2008… so if the clouds start to leak acid rain, then I think we are probably more prepared to hold up brolly’s that run for the nuclear bunker.

If you are a business your finance recruitment might be easier because there is less competition that in 2022 but more difficult because there is more candidate caution.  It might be easier because salary inflation has hit plateau but still tricky because salaries have experienced upward pressure for the neck end of 4 years!

If you have a requirement for someone highly capable in your finance team from CFO to accountant level then it would be great to speak – we’re really good at it.