World leaders at the G20 summit in Brisbane, Australia last weekend (15-16 November) made certain pledges in relation to employment and economic growth but some in the recruitment industry say more needs to be done.

The pledges, announced in the Leaders' Communiqué, included:

• Get 100m more women into work by 2025 (reduce the employment gap between men and women by a quarter)

• Create more quality jobs

• Reduce youth unemployment

• Boost G20 economies by at least 2% by 2018, adding £1.28 trillion to the global economy

Staffline Group chief executive Andy Hogarth told Recruiter he thought the pledges were “great news” and the aims “laudable”. 

 “The more people in work, the more people can get out of poverty,” he added. He said, though, there were some barriers, particularly to women gaining employment.

“The issue is childcare, particularly in the UK and probably everywhere in the world. Childcare is so expensive. By the time you’ve paid tax on your earnings and paid for childcare there not much left. It’s ok for some women because they do it for the mental stimulation but for others … it’s not affordable and it could be a real problem.”

The Association of Professional Staffing Companies (APSCo) chief executive Ann Swain told Recruiter the pledge to get 100m more women into work by 2025 was “a little broad brush”.

“In which sectors? What type of work? What demographic? Without a little more detail and strategy it’s a little flaky.”

She added that it needed to be accepted “that there are women who actively choose to stay at home and bring up their children full time, just as there are women who choose to work even though financially they don’t have to, and both of those options are fine”.

Steve Hallam, managing director at Page Personnel, told Recruiter that apprenticeships were key to reducing youth unemployment.

“[We] want the leaders to invest more in apprenticeships and internships. The way [leaders of] the G20 Summit can help is by throwing money at it, especially in the public sector.”

Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC) director of policy Tom Hadley said the pledges were broad but the fact employment had been recognised by the leaders was great.

He said it also offered the recruitment industry an opportunity to step up, particularly in countries without such an established industry as the UK.

The recruitment industry, he said, can help by creating more transparency in the market. In some countries, the job market was quite opaque with vacancies advertised by word of mouth.

Particularly for tackling the gender issue, the job market had to be more transparent, he said.

He also said a big part of quality job creation was pre-empting what future in-demand skills would be.

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