Deliveroo to beef up tech team with 300 hires

LONDON • Deliveroo, maker of an app for ordering take-out food, plans to hire 300 more technology workers as it seeks to take on rivals in an increasingly competitive sector.

The majority of the new jobs will be in high-skilled roles, such as software engineering, according to a company statement yesterday.

The hires will significantly expand Deliveroo's presence in London. The company employs a 125-strong tech team and plans to move soon into a new headquarters in the city's financial district.

Deliveroo, which raised US$275 million (S$391 million) in August, also said global orders on the platform grew 650 per cent last year. The company's British entity posted losses of £18.1 million (S$31.6 million) in 2015, according to the latest set of accounts filed with the Companies House registry.

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No change to Britain's jobless rate, but wages up

LONDON • The British economy lost fewer jobs than expected and wage growth picked up towards the end of 2016, suggesting that the labour market remains relatively resilient, official data showed.

The number of people in work fell by 9,000 to 31.8 million in the three months through November, whereas economists had predicted a decline of 35,000.

The jobless rate stayed at 4.8 per cent, the lowest since 2005, and wage growth reached the highest rate since 2015.

The labour market has cooled since the end of 2015, when it was adding more than 200,000 jobs a quarter, but there are few signs of hiring going into reverse as Britain prepares to begin negotiations to leave the European Union.

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