00:00Your agents are feeding back on employment and pay intentions.
00:04They're telling you that firms' employment intentions are now negative,
00:08with more firms reporting hiring pauses or freezes,
00:11and saying they will review staffing levels through natural attrition or redundancies
00:16if the outlook does not improve.
00:18Is that cause for concern?
00:20Something I watch very carefully, and by the way,
00:22when I go around the country with our agents, which I do regularly,
00:25I pick up that message as well.
00:27Now, I should say, however, again, that it hasn't yet come through
00:31in some of the early indicators that we look at,
00:34such as notifications of redundancies,
00:36because firms have to notify these things ahead of time.
00:40So we're not seeing that yet, but I'm watching this very carefully
00:43because it's one of the things that I think, if that starts to come through,
00:49we will obviously have to take very seriously into account.
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