Permanent Job Placements Expand at Slowest Pace for 10 Months, KPMG Says

A U.K. index of hiring for permanent jobs in August showed the slowest growth pace in 10 months, KPMG LLP and the Recruitment and Employment Confederation said.

The gauge of full-time job placements dropped to 56.3 from 60.2 in July, the groups said in an e-mailed report today in London. That’s the slowest pace since October. Readings above 50 indicate an increase in hiring.

The U.K. is bracing itself for a period of austerity as Prime Minister David Cameron pledges to reduce the country’s record budget deficit. Planned spending cuts, the deepest since World War II, will cause about 9 percent of government workers to lose their jobs by 2015, the Treasury’s watchdog predicts.

“In the months ahead we will see a substantial reduction in public-sector headcount as the cuts begin to bite,” Bernard Brown, head of business services at KPMG, said in the statement. “That is the painful but inevitable consequence of the coalition government’s determination to tackle the U.K.’s massive structural deficit.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Svenja O’Donnell in London at sodonnell@bloomberg.net.

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