Thomas Andre Sola: Great now we're online. Welcome and hello. And then heads-up today's webinar about the "State of the staffing industry In Europe". We were advised.. We're going to wait 10 to 20 seconds before we start, because it's the first session for today. So, I would want us maybe still at the coffee machine and getting the coffee ready to go.

Thomas Andre Sola: So wait in 10 to 20 seconds. And I thought, well, maybe we use this time to do a little bit of an activation exercise. So anyone who dilled in, I see a few people down, maybe you want to write us in which city and which country you are at the moment the, who we get a glance about from where you are and what you are doing.

Thomas Andre Sola: So let's see if we are already active.

Thomas Andre Sola: There's a few more people coming in and some response in Austria.. That's good. We like our Austrian colleagues, but I think now we're gonna not, we're going to start and again I'm proud to be able to host this today with Ann Swain. And we're going to speak today about the state of the staffing industry in Europe.

Thomas Andre Sola: What we're going to do in the next 60 minutes with you. You're going to see on this agenda, we're gonna introduce yourself as well as the trade body obstacle. We're going to speak about the European markets. At all and the influences on the European markets, then we're going to make an expose on the United Kingdom.

Thomas Andre Sola: And then we're going to make a little bit of a deep dive on the German market by itself. And we're going to give a summary and close the session. After 60 minutes, we would like to do this as interactive as possible. So if you have any kind of question, just raise it in the Q/A bar, and we're going to try to engage with you directly.

Thomas Andre Sola: So my name is Thomas Andre Sola, and I'm the Managing Director from APSCo Deutschland APSCo stands for the Association of Professional Staffing Companies. I've been working for over 15 years now in the staffing sector. I started 2006 with Hayes in Munich. Then I went to Switzerland. And I found it, I co-founded the company in 2011.

Thomas Andre Sola: The design to 2021. And since last year, I'm in this position, my contract experiences, Switzerland and Germany, and I'm now handing over to Ann already. And I'm going to mute myself too. 

Ann Swain: Good morning from the UK. Good afternoon or evening, depending on where you are in the world. My name is Ann Swain.

Ann Swain: I am the CEO of the Association of Professional Staffing Companies. I feel like about a hundred years in the staffing sector. I did start in the early eighties as a graduate trainee. My experience is pretty boring, but really I would say that the IT market was always my manner and created APSCo 22 years ago to serve a very specific purpose.

Ann Swain: Andre, may I have that next slide? Great. So I think it's worth setting the scene really as who apps go on. I promise this will be pretty much a nanosecond. So with the growth of the recruitment market across the world, and the differentiation starting to happen with world specialist recruitment companies.

Ann Swain: The association of technology staffing companies was created in 1999 in the UK. And that was created because there was government legislation specifically about IO 35, which is taxation legislation. And it was felt that these on team recruitment companies, contract oriented, really needed some specific help.

Ann Swain: From a lobbying point of view. And so we created a scope that went very well and we made some quite strong changes actually to that legislation before it was launched weirdly in the UK, that's still coming up, going down, coming up and is a huge subject of interest, sometimes dismay to the staffing sector.

Ann Swain: But I turned 19, sorry, in 2009. The view was taken, that the recruitment market was heading really into that professional arena and that it was a different type of trade body that was required that could separate the main state in those days of the recruitment market. From that professional recruitment market, it was both permanent, but also contract. Freelancer, whatever you want to call it. 

Ann Swain: And therefore APSCo association of professional staffing companies came about. We've grown dramatically in that timeframe and being in a niche market. What we recognized was that the growth of our members from the UK have a passport, get on a plane, open a business.

Ann Swain: And so consequently, we matched those. Those kinds of geographical expansion areas of our members having marched the expunction that they wanted to do from different niches, from IT, to engineering, Finance, whatever, but we actually matched their traveling opportunities by opening APSCo Asia in 2013.

Ann Swain: APSCo Deutschland in 2015 and APSCo Australia in 2016, we are currently expanding across the piece. Looking at expanding through Europe, looking at, and in fact, actively expanding across Southeast Asia. And let's just say the world is always stoked with regard to that, because of course what has happened is the professional staffing market is the area where we have all expanded.

Ann Swain: And that is where upscale have filled a gap with looking at making sure that the professional market is not going to be collateral damage. When legislation is created, that is about protecting vulnerable workers. So that in essence was a small niche in IT, a bigger niche across that professional market.

Ann Swain: But now looking to become the mainstay for the recruitment market, we've had impressive membership growth. I think that's because of the international basis of which we run things. But actually in addition to the expansion from a geographical point of view, Just in January last year, which may seem a weird time from a lockdown point of view, but it's in the right time.

Ann Swain: Now in hindsight, we created another part of APSCo global, the group, which is APSCo outsource, as you can imagine, especially with around 80% of this audience being positioned in North America represents the RPO MSP. Market arena very specifically. And our MD in that arena has come from a very long background in the outsource market.

Ann Swain: So we've expanded from a membership point of view. We're doing a lot of interesting things, I think we're innovative. We create impact, but we have quite an interesting view of what's happening globally. And one would hope from a European point of view with the European staffing sector.

Ann Swain: So, if I look at the European staffing marketing contents, I want to make one thing really clear. And I've got some global figures I'll say to you, but in my view, and this was a subject matter that we were given. There is no such thing as a European staffing market. And the reason why I'm saying that, which might be weird.

Ann Swain: In the context of our subject matter today is that every country within Europe has a different staff in the market, which is in a different stage of its evolution. Having come from a different starting place with a different background and therefore to group it all together is a difficult one. Before I even try and group some of it together, let's make sure we're all talking about the same understanding of what Europe is.

Ann Swain: It's pretty, obviously we have the European Union and I say we, but you can probably tell I'm a London girl British. And so consequently with the UK, having had Brexit just last year on the 31st of January. In 2020, 2020 the UK is not officially part of the European union, but for the purposes of what we're talking about today, I'm going to include it in because I suspect most of you would include that in there's a couple of other countries that I mentioned a little bit later on that are also not within the European union one.

Ann Swain: Currently Serbia, but is looking to be in the Europeanunion by about 2024. Norway's not currently within the EU, but has special arrangements. Aren't is definitely a country of interest potentially for any of you that are looking to expand specially, as you can imagine if you're in the telecoms market.

Ann Swain: So if you look at Europe as the 27 EU countries, plus a few extras that I'm throwing in, we're looking at a bigger arena than just being the EU. If we look at the recruitment market, we work on the basis of revenues, and bear with me. I'm in euros here because it seems to be around 390 billion Euro by worst with 2020 figures.

Ann Swain: We don't have any more up to date figures at this moment in time. But what I would say to you is this, the tail end of 2021 was generally. Again, difficult to say it. Every country from a European point of view, has an amazingly positive time. 43% of that global revenue is actually from Europe. North America has 33%.APAC, a pretty interesting percentage 2 and in South America, just the one, but it gives you a flavor of Europe being pretty important and actually.

Ann Swain: If you do count it as one homogenous group, which I'm encouraging you not to do, it's the biggest market. Okay. I needed to get that in the top 14 markets from a global point of view, geographically counters, about 87% of global revenue because we started early and we have grown and capitalize on that early starting point.

Ann Swain: Top five markets constitute around 64% of global revenue and the top five markets. The USA is pretty, obviously Japan and the Japanese count, slightly different things. It's a bit apples and pears as to what they're catching, but Japan is the second largest market. The UK, the third largest market with Germany and France coming in behind.

Ann Swain: Be aware the UK invented recruitment. It was invented actually in the long-term in Victorian times when all of a sudden there started to be a need for nannies and it was nice to see a bit of love there. Thank you for nannies and tutors to come and work in what had become a growth there in the middle classes actually, and teachers within the UK.

Ann Swain: Generally focused around London and then Manchester, and then it grew up from there. Then literally of course, if you look at the whole industrial revolution piece, the growth of infrastructure within the UK, which was happening in a big way in Victorian times, there started to be a need for temporary staff to, to be project oriented.

Ann Swain: So we got used to that project-based scenario in the UK very early on. The next country that took on the recruitment market and decided it was a good idea. It was not a European one. It was the USA. And realistically that could kick off in a big way when the need to grow in infrastructure in California, particularly San Francisco of the earthquakes really meant that the idea of project-based recruitment needs.

Ann Swain: In the USA and looks the largest market in the world by a long stretch. And boy, oh boy, did that work well for the USA. I would say that the European markets have been much slower to pick up the idea of temporary or agile workers or contractors. But let me tell you this boy oh boy is Europe catching.

Ann Swain: The top three countries constitute just under 15% of global turnover. And consequently, there is room for huge growth within this market. Andre let's move on. What are the European influences and the trends? Well, what I would say pretty obviously COVID is still having a huge impact across the world.

Ann Swain: And also across Europe, I've got some facts and figures just to give you a little bit of an idea of what that's meant to some of those countries and therefore what it would have meant to us from the recruitment market. One of the biggest things that we have globally, but again, in Europe is the skill shortages.

Ann Swain: We have a problem finding good candidates for our clients. It is obviously a candidate short market, especially at the professional end, but more than ever actually coming up with.

Ann Swain: And the world with regard to lorry drivers HGV so they're big, heavy goods drivers being in a huge shortage at the moment. And that's been going on for quite some time, as well as other areas of the lower end of the workforce. I'll give you a little flavor of what that's about. If we look at the growth of the un developed market.

Ann Swain: That's an interesting one. Let me tell you a great mate of mine, John Northern from the staffing industry owners who heads up the Amir side of staffing and shallowness has talked for a long time about anyone who wants to open up in Europe should definitely head toward the beer drinking. And, avoid the wine drinking countries.

Ann Swain: My understanding is he's not particularly a big beer drinker himself. But actually that's about the developed recruitment markets. I got Hartson. I'm not sure if it's the beer or whether it's for wine or whether it's just the comment, but maybe it's John nerve and listening in. But the reality is he's been absolutely on the mark with regard to that, but we are seeing across Europe a change.

Ann Swain: And that means some of those on development, undeveloped markets are opening up, have had huge growth in the last few years and potentially a place where one should look. The next thing I would say again, I think this is happening in most countries around the world. But boy or boys is strongly influenced or at the moment is the importance of eat DE&I, equality, diversity and inclusion, but also the big agenda, which is newer actually is about the environmental side of things, social and government agenda that our end user clients have and wanting us to become catalysts for change.

Ann Swain: I'll talk briefly about that. And if I look at M&A activity recently, then that will give you a flavor from a European point of view, where it is perceived to be hot at this very moment in time and what markets they might be in. Andre let's head on COVID. Thank you. If you look at the effects of COVID-19 or staffing revenues in some of these core countries, you'll see how they dropped back Italy.

Ann Swain: Interesting. How they dropped back right in the middle of COVID. Now let this be aware that COVID doesn't seem to be over yet, but what there are, is some predictions of 2022 based on still having a level of COVID around in these countries. And remember different countries are dealing with things differently.

Ann Swain: And again, have come from a different place to others where they've gone to their level of growth in what they're doing. The UK has been hit, you'll be aware amazingly hard, per hundred thousand people. We've had 220 deaths, which is, you know, pretty big numbers. And therefore the market was hit very heavily. And again, whether the countries within Europe and further afield locked down early or locked down hard, whether they were set up well enough for people to work from home.

Ann Swain: If that's an option, watch protection and assistance, different countries have been given from their own governments on how to Survive COVID will actually affect very strongly the way the market has been. Most countries have dropped back. Italy, I would say, is a different one. And it's an interesting one because actually Italy was hit very early and very hard.

Ann Swain: And the government locked down very early and very hard in quite specific places. And what you'll find is our recruitment market. That was small. Started to get bigger during lockdown where projects needed to be completed. And particularly if you look at some of the professional markets where people could be working from home, there was actually a level of growth from let's think about it 10% or not very much.

Ann Swain: It's still not huge, is it? But the reality is there has seemed to be growth and that's similar to Spain and most of you will be aware. Pretty obviously both Spain and Italy, other wine drinking countries that are suggestive of having relatively small recruitment markets to start with, but are now seeing those kinds of growth.

Ann Swain: From, bigger country, bigger recruitment market, even though there's wine and beer and they are close to Belgium, but actually dropped back pretty heavily. But what you are seeing now is growth across the piece. The predictions for 2022 were done in May last year. And so what I would say, and we've used information from the global staffing industry market estimations and prediction.

Ann Swain: Forecasted what I would say in may last year, the UK recruitment market had not by then seen the level of growth that we saw to the tail end of the year. It went pretty mad for the last six months of the year. So I would have a view, but this is a guesstimate rather than a real prediction. Oh, substantially higher growth levels.

Ann Swain: In a lot of those markets, UK, my manner, I would look at much higher growth, especially from a low base period. For this year, the market is flying very high. Andre. Can you move? Yeah. Thank you. If we look at the skill shortages, you know, we are all acutely aware of the skill shortages from a global point of view, and you will see, I'm quoting some global figures here.

Ann Swain: These come from a Korn ferry survey, one of their future work scenarios, which is looking at the global talent market realistically. And again, you can imagine with Korn ferry, we're looking at some of the top edge things, but it comes to a mentoring point. What has been interesting is we've been looking from prediction point of view about the state of work and work Hertz.

Ann Swain: And the biggest worry has been the fear of in some ways, the fear or the opportunity set really with gone to automation and therefore the dropping off. At some of the lower ends of needing warm blooded bodies. And at the top end, particularly in areas like captaincy, actually, that things can be done from an automated point of view.

Ann Swain: Some of the areas that we thought could never actually be touched by automation have been the areas that have been predicted to actually be fully automated at sometime soon enough, I started looking at whether robots were going to be the future. And then of course it was artificial intelligence.

Ann Swain: But the reality is that this moment in time is the prediction of 85 million people. Sure. For the jobs that we need them to do by 2030 is a real change around. And what was anticipated, that's going to cost a lot of unrealized revenue for businesses. Means that boy. Oh boy. I don't, you know, I don't want to have a potentially great outcome and be celebrating a great outcome for the recruitment market off the backs of businesses, generally having a hard time, but there is a reality check to this is there's a real opportunity.

Ann Swain: Europe has been hit very heavily. More so than most countries with regard to skill shortages and predictions of those moving forward. And that is all about our low birth rates. And so consequently, you will find skill shortages. If you're looking to come to Europe, a skill shortage as being one of the main things apart from COVID at this moment in time, one of the ongoing recurring themes as a problem.

Ann Swain: However, be acutely aware that when there are skill shortages, our fees, our margins should be increasing. And we're finding that they are, they should be increasing because finding that talent, that the end user client cannot become so much more difficult, be aware. Of course, it impacts us in our own companies to find great talent.

Ann Swain: And therefore the market also gets hit by us poaching. Other people from competitors, people coming, claiming a great successful recruitment background. When actually they turn out to be not particularly good when they get to you. And the whole market gets a lot of churn in it with overly inflated salaries.

Ann Swain: So there is the opportunity. There's also a threat, but let me say this to you. I'm an ex UK Sales Director in a fairly large recruitment company in the UK. And what I cannot resist. Can't kick the sales out of this woman. That is for sure that if you haven't and you're in an area actually, where there is a real skill shortage, if you haven't moved, your prices are up yet.

Ann Swain: Come on. This is your timeframe. I'm not saying taking the Mickey out of any end-user clients, but it's taking you more time, more effort to find people, make sure that you are paid for all of that effort, because when there's a glut of candidates out there, we all know that the end user client base, or indeed an RPO or MSP will push down those margins under our fees.

Ann Swain: Now's the time for us to stand. Pretty strongly. Andre. If we look at what are the most interesting European markets, then what we need to do is look at a whole range of different things. That's about populations, it's about their economy and predictions, but that it's about realistically numbers of recruitment companies already there and how competitive the landscape is going to be.

Ann Swain: Wherever it is, I'd be, it's going to be about compliance and regulations and openness. With regard to what compliance looks like from a working point of view in these kinds of countries, but these are the most interesting ones or all of those factors at the minute Norway I pulled out earlier on by saying not actually in the EU at the moment.

Ann Swain: Has a close relationship with the EU is part of the European economic area. Serbia down here for a bit of a longer time. Potential is a market. Again, if we look at all of those characteristics, a growth area, pretty small potatoes, most of these long term bets at the moment, but opportunities for growth, I would say the UK and Germany are pretty densely populated by competitors.

Ann Swain: However big enough countries opportunities for innovative recruitment companies to come in and to do well. Andre, let me move. If we look from actually I'm going to cover this part of the EDN IP. And I did mention it earlier on, but what I would say is this, one of the biggest things that the end user clients are talking about is making sure that their companies fit appropriately the profile of the audience for their goods or services, but actually the populations that they are in. And I really do think that we can be a catalyst for change. That's kind of interesting. So we're often following things. We're doing what the clients want. We can really take a lead in this kind of arena and what I would say out to go, I've done a lot of work.

Ann Swain: We have a fantastic time. Piece of work, a huge piece of work called upscale embrace for our members to make sure that they have access to anything that they want to in different specific areas. We have seven protected characteristics in the UK to actually make sure they can boost opportunities to help their clients to actually under their own firms.

Ann Swain: To really work hand in hand with this kind of scenario. This is an opportunity though. And there's a demand from NGO clients to get our own houses in order. Now I strongly believe that the recruitment market is all about success and success is often either on your screen or in my day on a big white board.

Ann Swain: And therefore it's pretty obvious, and we don't care where somebody is from or what, you know, what their gender is or whatever, but the reality is. Is it a good thing to measure it? Good thing to make proactive changes, to make sure that recruitment companies are in fact reflecting the needs of the clients, because they are looking for us to do that.

Ann Swain: And any big piece of business now from a European point of view will make demands on you. Oh, the only reason why you should be doing it, but they're making demands, the newer areas. Is this whole thing of ESG. So it's environment, social and governance, which is really about today's candidates, looking at the culture and employee branding of any company that they're going to work for and making sure they fit.

Ann Swain: The ethical code that candidate has. And indeed for those clients to, to match that to the client base that they themselves had, or customer base, we can do some really good work. We can help the bigger companies have this kind of stuff in place. We, as recruitment companies, can help the smaller customers that we have to move that agenda forward and help them find the right kind of people.

Ann Swain: It may be something we charge them to do. And that's appropriate. As long as we know what we're doing. Big trend across Europe, huge in the UK.

Ann Swain: Across everything that we do. If we look at M&A, I'm going to do this quickly, and then handovers are Andre, but 79 deals in 2019, a drop in 2000 trades. You haven't got the figures for 21 yet, but we will get them. If we look at it, the majority are in professional markets. The majority, if we look at it across a range of professional markets, 17% of them are in healthcare or a T of a fairly big market.

Ann Swain: Multiple niches are working. But actually around 50% is 49%. I think, actually, of all European deals where UK business. Built second to that. Interestingly it was in the Netherlands with about 24%. And if I look at the Netherlands, why might that be? It's not the biggest market to miss. It's not the biggest market out there, but I suspect.

Ann Swain: That's from a European headquarters point of view of a client. That being based in the Netherlands where people speak the most amazingly eloquent, I mean, not just good English, we're talking eloquent English that can work across different markets, including the UK for those international businesses. That makes sense.

Ann Swain: But what it says to me is if you are in Europe and in the UK, or if you are from somewhere else looking to target one of those companies, the UK is obviously going to make sense. The Netherlands is second. Have a look at other places and get some languages on board because realistically there's a lot of growth there to be had.

Ann Swain: Okay. I'm going to look quickly at the UK market or on our next slide. Thank you, Andre. And I don't need to read all of this stuff to you. Let me pick up some big things. Pretty. Obviously the UK has a big population, small country, big population around now, just coming up to 68 million. It's got the third biggest workforce in Europe.

Ann Swain: 30 million payroll to employees and those figures go on. You're going to have this slide so you can get those vehicles down. What I would see is we end up having some very up-to-date figures on the UK market. As you can imagine with regard to doing quarterly surveys of vacancies, this actual figure is from the office of national statistics, which said there were 1.2 million.

Ann Swain: Vacancies are their term. They call me old fashioned, but I call those requirements as a recruiter recruitment, a recruiter vacancies out there at the tail end of the year, that's Q4. That's a huge number and they need to be filled. If we look at working from home figures during lockdown, loads of people were working from home.

Ann Swain: Most of you are working from home. You can see I'm studying at home as well. Now, it isn't normally like that, but there is obviously a trend where people go back a couple of days a week. If we look at. Moving forward. As I said, that's definitely going to be a trend, but nowhere near the 37% of the UK recruitment market that is chunky is worth about 36 billion pounds.

Ann Swain: I'd gone two pounds because I feel the need to in the UK with predicted growth, although that's official predictions, I've said to you, I think it's going to be much higher actually than that. But again, I'm a recruiter, so I'm always pretty positive and ambitious on setting targets with things. 80% of the value, as you can imagine is through that temporary contract market, a really strong contract market. There's 27 and a half to 32, 28, sorry, thousand recruitment companies.

Ann Swain: We find about 6,000 startups every year about. Five and a half thousand, maybe 5,000 go under. They're not the same group. There's some ones going under from a different timeframe. And what we do have in the UK is a small percentage of the really big ones, but own a smallish percentage of the market and a very long tail different focus that in Europe, but a very long tail of entrepreneurs who have set up their own businesses, some of whom are unbelievably well, and it's been impressive. 

Ann Swain: There's about 150,000 people working in the recruitment market. And the other thing is the third largest market. But I want to say this to you. We have in UK, a very strong outsource market. That's not the same in the rest of Europe. Okay. There is growth in that region.

Ann Swain: So Germany and you know, some of those, again, Northern European countries are starting to see signs of an outsource market. However, it is very different from the outsource market within the UK. If you look at MSP RPO kind of business from a global point of view, at times over, I'm going to bear with me, but that's how it's measured.

Ann Swain: About $157 billion just last year. If you look at EMEA, it's about $51 billion across that whole area of which $27 billion worth is the UK. So what you can see is the UK has a mature, outsource market. It's growing. It's been about. Just over a third of all Palm recruitment businesses, actually going through the outsource market and a big growth area for us in the UK.

Ann Swain: Historically the recruitment market staffing sector and outsource market didn't get on, that's changing. And a lot of recruitment companies within the UK are seeing opportunities to not only work alongside. With the injured client in essence, being an outsource business, working through them, but actually getting more business, maybe slightly lower margins, but more business as a result of working through that outsource market.

Ann Swain: Andre, let me hand it over to you to look at the German market. 

Thomas Andre Sola: Thank you Ann, you got a lot of positive reactions, so I hope I get as much as hearts and thumbs ups as you got. Yeah. The first one's great stuff. Thanks for that. Yeah. And again, just to encourage the audience, if you have any kind of questions, just engage directly and type it into a QA session, I'm more than happy to answer your questions.

Thomas Andre Sola: So I'm going all over now to Germany after this interesting European and UK trip. And we already seen this, that we have the second biggest workforce in Europe, powerhouse Germans, the power of automotive powers and other industries with 34 million social insurance jobs. And we have quite a lot of jobs open in Q4.

Thomas Andre Sola: I think the very important. The changings come from the new government, which we formed in December of last year with deliberates which have a very positive, hopefully a positive momentum on the freelance staffing market and the green that the social Democrats have on the permanent markets. But we're going to have a look at the different business areas in the next slides, just to break it down.

Thomas Andre Sola: One thing, which was in this new government, which we already have in Germany and Germany has the highest remote working rates in Europe with 10%. So, yeah. I think for the staffing industry, very important as well, because if the people are able to work remotely, if the permanent paper I'm able to work remotely, that was so far always a very freelancing to do so that the delineation between the permanent and the freelance is not so clear anymore.

Thomas Andre Sola: And we're going to see that this gives a little bit of fun for the permanent market in Germany. Germany is not a licensed market as at least only the temp or the license. Therefore it's very hard to get consistent numbers. And one of my hobbies is to collect numbers about the staffing industry in Germany.

Thomas Andre Sola: And there's a reason number coming out from the statistic. Which says the volume stuffing at its staffing industry has a 25 billion volume in Germany. Lumen doesn't come from a very very famous market research company considering it's a little bit higher. But I think. The Problem with numbers, is that it's not so clear when someone is doing perm, temp contracting freelancing.

Thomas Andre Sola: So, but this gives us a little bit of an indication. We have a strong growth at the end, especially towards the end of the last year. And then in another webinar, I spoke about these numbers and in Q3 Q4, we saw a 10% growth over the staffing market. So, we discussed this as a European trend. We see it in Germany as well.

Thomas Andre Sola: Candidate shortage will always be there, not only white collar Blue collar as well, we think that we have around 15,000 staffing companies. With employing more than 75,000 employees could be a little bit higher. Maybe 10 to 15,000 more employees. We're not a hundred percent sure, but it's, I think it's a fair estimate.

Thomas Andre Sola: We're the fifth largest staffing market. And as, and highlight at the top three for international investment, just to elaborate on the new study, which came out in Germany 2021 was the highest ever recorded M&A markets overall for the whole industry. And we need to see if this is for the staffing industry as well, but when it comes to M&A Germany is very hot at the moment.

Thomas Andre Sola: We have the highest vacancies recorded for a lot of years as well in the industry, but for recruiters as well. And we were always kind of around a candidate market, but now we are a hundred percent of the candidate market. So S said you should look at the business terms and go back to your clients.

Thomas Andre Sola: And they're often asked by people which want to invest or come to Germany. Can you explain a little bit more about this different business areas? So, and I made a little bit of my homework and I'm going to show it now, starting with the temporary or Abbott GmbH . So if you go to Germany, you should learn this term up at Abbott GmbH .

Thomas Andre Sola: It's not an easy one. And thanks for the heart. I'm very happy. I did do, as you see on the orange graph, the development of the temp candidates over the last 10 years. So you see, we had a, we had some highs we bought at one point over 1 billion. Then unfortunately the social Democrats pushed a new Relic's relation in 2007 and it had some big impact on the temp numbers.

Thomas Andre Sola: We went down. Also triggered from Corona to 580,000. So 60% of the prior numbers. And now we are going up, especially in Q4 and the temp market is super violent. And we think that the new government is gonna put a little bit pressure on it because of the one to implement equal pay from the first day.

Thomas Andre Sola: At the moment we have equal pay from the ninth month. That means as you are staffing in the staffing industry, you know what this means? You need to know your client better from the first day and the margin is potentially going down. But I think the temp market is very big in Germany.

Thomas Andre Sola: And over 10,000 companies with 60,000 employees for us as we are the association of professional staffing companies. So we're looking at the professionals and expert markets are 25% of this. 700,000 at the moment, temps people are specialists. So whites, white collar workers. So that gives you a little bit of a market volume.

Thomas Andre Sola: If you want to enter this market segment, it's highly regulated and very complete, a little complicated to comprehend, very German. So if you ever go if you have a plan to go to temp Germany, we highly advise you to reach out to us or other partners to get a proper understanding beforehand. And as you see the backend vacancies numbers only in temp are very high as well.

Thomas Andre Sola: Good. So let's go to the next market. That's a freelance market in Germany and the freelance market in Germany. Has risen consequently, over the last 20 years as well. It's called self employed in Germany and self employed covers a lot of different skills, not only the classical freelance skills, like we want to talk about like a freelancer or IT or Engineering a freelancer it covers.

Thomas Andre Sola: All kinds of texts, concerts, medics. It's a very very broad thing in Germany, but if you break it down on this number, it is 1.4 million and seven employed on the numbers, which is relevant for our market. You see that we only have around 100,000 IT freelancers, which is for me considering the problem we have in Germany with digitalization.

Thomas Andre Sola: Relatively the low number, I would say, as well as the engineers, around 100,000 freelancers in the engineering area. It's not so big. And we see from the politics, especially the social Democrats that are gonna put more pressure on the Did Zev employment topic. And we think, or we hope a little bit that the freelancers are gonna need to pay it in the pension found in the future and the German pension found and that we get in exchange for that a little bit more pressure on the freelancing by itself.

Thomas Andre Sola: And the UK, for example, is considered IDA for the five that we had a lot of discussions in the last two to three years about this. Yeah, so last but not least is the permanent market. Oops. There it is. And the permanent market is very hard to get numbers on. So I spoke to different companies again, blooming, dong.

Thomas Andre Sola: They expect, or they evaluate the market in 2020 that we placed over. 1 million people. So this 1 million people obviously can break down into three permanent categories. So the pump is contingent, so no cure, no pay placements. We think it's about 500,000. Then you obviously have to retain the industry staffing.

Thomas Andre Sola: Executive C level drops that we have quite consistent numbers about 100,000 placed candidates. And then the different that the difference between that is around three to 400,000, which we consider the temp to perm. So actually the temp companies are various phones per player in Germany.

Thomas Andre Sola: Unexpected and very often not discussed in this way, but it is like this, and it's definitely a competitor for classical contingent, prominence different companies where, so. Permanently, super Boland have your tool, the numbers going up, and if you read the positions of the political parties we definitely think permanent is permanent position.

Thomas Andre Sola: That's the way to go in Germany. So if you want to enter the market, I would recommend that you start with permanent stuffing because of more flexibility in the home office and increased flexibility. Certainly going to push our end clients to consider more permanent jobs rather than temps or freelance.

Thomas Andre Sola: Yeah. So if you have any kind of question about these numbers just highlighted because if not, we more or less are already coming to the end of the session. And I think we have 14 minutes to go, so we could. Use the time greetings back to Afghanistan or everything is well over there. So coming to the summary we have seen, we have a very strong European staffing market, and so we are in a very good position to be in at the moment growth retention and hiring of recruiters, I think is a focus of the most empties, which has speaking.

Thomas Andre Sola: The key message for all our huge American and International friends, which do not know our European market too much. It's made out of different markets. So it's not one consistent maker market, but I think the US at least as I understand this is very very different when you go to different states as well.

Thomas Andre Sola: So European is made up of a lot of different states with a lot of different legislations. So it takes a little bit of time. To lend an expense as answered maybe in the UK and Netherlands, and then expanded to German countries or the interesting, or why during a conference was I'm a beer drinker. I would consider starting with a beer drinking country, but it's up to you.

Thomas Andre Sola: Yeah, talent shortages as we discussed it. It's pretty clear. And one of our key discussions points and obstacle directions as well. And what positions we have or what opportunities we have to overcome this talent shortage is definitely one of our focuses for 2022. And yeah the second half of 2021 is hopefully, and the by way forward in 2022 and the next few years, because we definitely can, what would like to see a strong.

Thomas Andre Sola: Staffing and recruitment markets in Germany, UK and other European countries, not only it's a lead in Spain would be good to see these numbers in Germany, in the UK again. And if we fight for hopefully the last wave of this crazy COVID crisis, we're gonna do business. So, yeah. And then I have already come to the last slide. No questions. Yeah. So I think that's a very important message at the end. If you want to discuss with us. Directly with Ann or myself about the market to write about ED&I or whatever we just showed you.

Thomas Andre Sola: You can reach out our sources either to the UK APSCO Global or APSCO Germany or APSCO Asia or APSCO Australia by LinkedIn. You see my name, just find me and connect with me or, and we are happy to engage with you. So, Ann we have 10 minutes left and another greetings from India and Afghanistan.

Thomas Andre Sola: What's your record? No questions left. 

Ann Swain: I think contract, what I would say is we've given everybody quite a lot of information. We skipped through this and let's face it. Nobody minds leaving a talk a little bit earlier. There are calls to make. And businesses to run. So what I would say is, thank you for your attention.

Ann Swain: Have a great rest of day, whether you're starting like Andre and I, or whether you're coming to a close for the rest of the evening, we wish you well, the opportunities of vast thank goodness. We're all in the recruitment and staffing section. Goodbye from me.