By Martin Fell

Ongoing economic turmoil and the increasingly dire eurozone situation is putting huge amounts of strain on the UK's labour market, according to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD).

The organisation claims that the number of jobs available in the UK is likely to decrease dramatically in the medium term as employers adopt a "wait and see" attitude.

According to CIPD, businesses are making fewer redundancies, but recruitment opportunities are also falling.

"The downside is that recruitment intentions are falling, which will make further rises in unemployment therefore seem inevitable given that public sector job losses are outpacing the predictions made by the Office for Budget Responsibility," CIPD public policy adviser Gerwyn Davies said.

He added that a further increase in unemployment seemed inevitable in the short and medium term, but said that fewer positions were now being outsourced overseas.

According to the latest data from the Office for National Statistics, the current unemployment rate in the UK is 8.1 per cent – but in the 16 to 24-year-old category, this figure is much higher at 21.3 per cent.