Michael Page International upbeat on global job market

Recruitment company Michael Page International is cautiously optimistic about the jobs market outlook as the global recovery gathers pace, but while it highlighted a brightening UK picture in its trading update, it said it is looking to emerging markets for future growth. The group reported rising profits across all regions of its global business. Chief executive, Steve Ingham, said the main driver was recruitment for permanent jobs as confidence levels among employers improved. He also pointed to a stronger-than-expected performance in its UK business, which makes up about a third of the group's gross profits. But he said other markets were key to future gains. "We have strong market-leading positions in specialist recruitment in Asia and Latin America and are particularly optimistic about our prospects in these regions," he said. "While we believe the outlook for the UK, continental Europe and North America is less certain, we are now experiencing an improvement in almost all markets." The group's trading update echoed the outlooks of fellow recruiters Hays and Robert Walters earlier this week. Both said they were seeing signs of improvement, particularly in the Asia Pacific region, and they were increasing their own staffing levels to take advantage. Michael Page shares were up more than 1%, or 5.8p, to 429.3p in morning trading as the company reported that rapidly expanding business in the Asia Pacific region and improving market conditions in Europe, the Middle East and Africa – including in the UK – helped its first-quarter gross profits rise 7.9% on the previous three months to £97.8m. They were up 2.9% on a year earlier. Across its business the firm's strongest profits growth on the quarter was in the Americas, at 15.3%, with some help from improving financial services recruitment in North America. On a year ago, Asia Pacific was the star performer with gross profits up almost 40%. The recruiter said of the UK: "Market conditions in general improved during the quarter, with the strongest being in financial services, sales, retail, human resources and technology."