Companies plan to reduce jobs or recruit fewer people before increases in payments and national insurance wages, according to a survey of British employers.
The companies interviewed by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) also said that they would increase their prices to cover increasing employment costs.
Distinct research carried out by the Federation of Small Businesses found in the last three months of last year’s confidence among small businesses have reached its lowest point for 10 years, not to mention the cocovid pandemic.
The Treasury said that it delivered the stability that companies had to invest and develop.
Risks to national employers’ insurance contributions as well as an increase in the national minimum wage, announced in the October budget, will come into force in April.
According to the CIPD survey, just over a third of the 2,000 companies that he spoke said they were planning to reduce their workforce by layoffs or by recruiting fewer workers.
Other companies, some 42%, said they would increase prices while a quarter of those questioned said “that they cancel or reduce investment plans in or widen their business”.
The results should before the latest official employment figures which should be published on Tuesday, followed by inflation data on Wednesday.
Peter Cheese, CIPD Managing Director, said that these were “the most important decline changes in the feeling of employers we have seen in the past 10 years, outside the pandemic”.
He added: “Our data show that it is the sectors of the everyday economy, such as retail and hospitality, which use a large number of people, which will be particularly affected by imminent increases in costs job. “
In November, a group of the largest retailers in the United Kingdom warned that street job losses were “inevitable”, prices would increase and that stores would close due to the increase in budget taxes and others rising costs.
Tesco, Amazon, Greggs, Next and Other Chains called the Treasury to reconsider some of the measures.
They said that the “cumulative burden” of budgetary changes and other policies already in the pipeline would add billions of costs to a sector with a thin beneficiary margin.
The federation of small businesses said that in terms of confidence, it came across a wide range of sectors.
Its small business index, which measures the levels of trust among companies, noted that small businesses “are prepared for a contraction in the size of their business during the first three months of 2025”.
