Recruitment companies in the UK and London

You asked

​Please provide the following information:

• How many Recruitment companies are there in the UK?
• How many Recruitment companies are registered in London only?
• What is the average size of a recruitment company?
• Average number of hires a recruitment company makes per year (internally)

We said

Thank you for your Freedom of Information request enquiring about the number of recruitment companies in the UK, how many recruitment companies are registered in London only, what is the average size of a recruitment company and the average number of hires a recruitment company makes per year.

We produce an annual publication called UK Business: Activity, size and location. This publication breaks down the number of UK Businesses (registered for VAT and/or PAYE)  by geography, employment size-band, industry and legal status. It is created using an extract of the Inter Departmental Business Register (IDBR) taken on 15 March 2019.

Table 1 shows the number of recruitment companies in the UK and in London, the associated employment counts and the average size. We are unfortunately unable to provide the average number of hires for any business or industry, as we do not retain vacancy data on the IDBR. Therefore, we do not hold this information.

Please see the attached spreadsheet, named 'Count_and_Employment_of_enterprises_London_and_UK'. This shows analysis of the count and employment of VAT and/or PAYE based enterprises in specified UK SIC2007 Subclasses in London and the UK.

If you require any further analysis or information, please feel free to contact the Inter-Departmental Business Register Data Analysis Service (IDBRDAS) at IDBRDAS@ons.gov.uk.