A West Midlands jobs agency is offering hope on ‘Blue Monday’ as it reports its best-ever calendar year for landing people into work.<\/p>\n
Starting Point Recruitment (SPR), based in Walsall and Birmingham, has reported a 50% increase in the number of people it got into work in 2025.<\/p>\n
Falling on the third Monday in January, Blue Monday is a day commonly acknowledged as being the most financially, emotionally, and physically challenging throughout the year.<\/p>\n
SPR also said it placed more people in jobs in 2025 than in any year since its inception in 2002, getting 1,093 people into work.<\/p>\n
The company is also reporting its best-ever third quarter, having placed 322 people into work in the three months to the end of December 2025 – a 59% rise from the same period in 2024.<\/p>\n
The company said in a statement that these record numbers come against the backdrop of a bleak UK jobs market, which makes Blue Monday bluer still for people out of work. <\/p>\n
The latest monthly jobs data from the Office of National Statistics (ONS), being published on 20 January, is expected to follow the same worsening trend as the previous 18 months.<\/p>\n
According to the ONS, the national unemployment rate rose by 0.4 percentage points to 5.1% in the three months to the end of November, with the West Midlands\u2019 joblessness rate of 5.9% the worst of any region outside London.<\/p>\n
Professor Paul Cadman, CEO of SPR, said: \u201cIn every month of 2025, SPR bucked the bleak national trend of fewer overall job vacancies with more people competing for them. We did this by deploying our simple strategy: looking at the person, not just the CV that summarises them. <\/p>\n
\u201cIn the past year, we\u2019ve supported 1,093 people with their confidence and self-esteem. Their experiences show that there is still hope, even on days like Blue Monday.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two examples of jobseekers who recently found work after long and bruising job-hunts were Megan Naish, 37, from Walsall, and Aundray Gow, 22, from Willenhall. After 10 months and 300 fruitless applications, Naish managed to secure a retail role at Heron Foods With SPR’s help.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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