RECESSION? What recession? For one Laindon recruitment agency, the problem isn’t finding the work, it’s finding workers.

Bekham Resourcing still has well-paid jobs on its books across a range of careers, including IT, engineering, accountancy, and shipping.

“We read and hear about people being made redundant left, right and centre. We thought we would be inundated by people looking for work,” says director Helen Lowes.

Instead, Bekham staff are left wondering what happened to that tide of unemployed staff. “We cover the whole country, and it is certainly worse up north,” says Helen.

“But here in the Basildon area, we’ve got employers who would love to take people on. We’ve got juicy jobs with great salaries. But where is everyone?”

Bekham is now in its eighth year, but Helen and her business partner Bev Strawford have been in the recruitment business long enough to remember the last recession, in the early 1990s.

“It was very different back then,” Bev says. “People were queueing round the block for just about any job going.

“This time round, firms still seem to be thriving, people have jobs and money to spend.

“We’ve just spent £40,000 on a new website and we though we would be able to cherrypick from the applicants locking on to the site. But it just hasn’t happened.”

One economic shift that Helen and Bev have detected is an increase in people planning to holiday at home, rather than spending money on foreign travel.

The result has been gratifying for some of the companies they service.

“We have a trampoline manufacturer on our books and they are really booming,” says Helen.

“It’s because people are planning to spend this summer in the garden with their family rather than travelling, and they are buying outdoors things.”

The weakness of the pound against the dollar is helping manufacturing.

“American companies are starting to place more orders with the engineering firms we deal with,” Helen says.

Helen and Bev’s advice to anyone who wants to guarantee a prosperous career is simple.

“Become an engineer.” Yet there are plenty of other skills and professions where demand for staff continues to exceed supply and just one in which there is an undisputed seller’s market for employers.

“The only time we’ve been inundated,” says Helen, “is when we had a job going in recruitment.

“The phone didn’t stop ringing.”