The Association of Technology Staffing Companies (ATSCo) has reported a “stable” year in 2007 from its members.

The confidence index, completed by members throughout the year, suggests that more permanent vacancies were registered, marginally more contract requirements were coming in; margins and permanent fees were slightly up but the industry were receiving less useable responses to their adverts.

In her annual chief executive’s report to ATSCO members, Ann Swain (pictured) said: “The big issue is that we have been facing is a lack of raw material to train into decent recruitment consultants.

“With concerns over the ripple in the sub prime American mortgage fiasco, share prices have taken a tumble in the recruitment sector in the last few months."

Commenting on reports of a looming economic slowdown, the chief executive said: "It would be easy to predict a dismal 2008 but frankly I am not going to. All the trends at the moment are suggesting steady growth for the year. Obviously some markets always outperform others, with telecommunications technology infrastructure looking good on the IT side and concern over oil and gas on the engineering side.”