Many recruitment firms in sectors like financial services and information technology will need to consolidate to survive, according to Grant Thornton, the UK accountancy firm.

A new report from Grant Thornton details some of the difficulties the UK recruitment sector has faced recently, with the combined market capitalisation of the sector down by 27.4% between January 2001 and June 2002. The financial services sector has been particularly badly hit as many investment banks have made large-scale redundancies. This effectively means that demand for jobs has far outpaced supply.