AS SPECIALIST jobs disappear with the credit crunch, those tasked with recruiting them are suffering the same fate.

Alistair Cox, head of the UK’s largest recruitment firm, Hays, which is due to issue a trading update tomorrow, said conditions were “the toughest market worldwide we’ve ever worked in.” This was amply illustrated by recruitment rival Michael Page International’s own update yesterday.

The firm, which operates a financial and legal recruitment office in Liverpool, reported a 45% fall in second-quarter gross profits of £83.8m, down from last year’s record £152.4m.

Its operations across the UK, Asia Pacific and the Americas all suffered similar falls as employment opportunities significantly narrowed.

And chief executive Steve Ingham admitted that the main reason the group had remained profitable in the first half had been the fact it had shed a third of its own workforce in the past year, mostly through natural attrition.

He warned that, although the rate of decline in UK recruitment had slowed, he anticipates “a challenging third quarter as we enter into the seasonally quieter summer period, both in Continental Europe which was later into the downturn, and in the UK.”

However, shares in the group showed gains of around 3%, after traders said that the sign of some stabilisation in the staffing market indicated the firm could benefit having already aggressively cut back costs.