The Bermuda jobs market has been hit hard by the falling value of the dollar, according to one of the Island's specialist recruitment agencies.

They reckon that potential employees are being lured away to places such as Canada and Dublin in Ireland because of the strength their respective currencies, the Canadian dollar and the euro, and the bigger financial rewards and packages companies in these places can offer.

Yesterday sterling was trading at $2.03, the euro exchange rate was close to $1.38 and the Canadian dollar hit a 30-year high of close to 96 US cents.

Chris Bailey, business development manager at Expertise Ltd., owners of Bermuda Jobs, based in Hamilton, admitted it is becoming increasingly difficult to attract new staff, particularly from the UK.

He said: "Definitely trying to attract UK candidates to Bermuda is becoming more difficult because of the exchange rate (of the dollar to the pound). I would say that the UK candidates are expecting the same salary as they are earning in the UK."

Mr. Bailey, whose company offers human resources outsourcing, while Bermuda Jobs looks after the recruitment side of things, claims that recruiters have trouble competing with the Canadian and Dublin markets and are being forced to look further afield for new staff as a result.

"We therefore find that attracting people from the Canadian and Dublin marketplace and getting people coming in from places like the Philippines and Australia and the like is proving frustrating — employers are finding it hard to get references and screening processes done," he said.

"It is just about finding out how qualified these people are in terms of working out what the equivalent is to the qualifications from their own countries.

"The Bermuda market has some competitors like Dubai and Vermont, which are attracting candidates from the Island, so to retain and sustain is what we need to focus on as an industry."

They are similarly struggling to source employees from the US because of the income tax Americans who earn above $80,000 per annum incur back home while working in Bermuda, which often does not make it worth their while relocating.

"The problem of recruiting from the US is that there is not a good tax advantage for American employees — they are still taxed in the US if they work here," he said.

"So there is a not a great call from the US and we actually tend to find that unless a company is relocating from the US to Bermuda that hiring from the US is harder than from Canada and Dublin."

He believes that all of the professional sectors have been worst hit by the decline in the power of the dollar.

"Any of the professional skills markets have been affected," he said. "The accountants and actuals and other such professionals are a commodity anywhere in the world and it makes it harder to attract them because of these outside factors."

But Mr. Bailey sees a silver lining to the situation, in terms of what Bermuda has to offer as an environment to live and work in.

"Bermuda is a great place to live and there is definitely an attraction to work on the Island."

And he said Bermuda Jobs is counteracting the problem of recruiting by promoting themselves overseas in some of these rival hot spots.

"We have actually got offices in Canada and Dublin and New York, specifically set up for Bermudians who are finishing their studies there to attract them back to the Island and also to generate other customers and we have done a campaign with other accounting firms aimed at that. We are trying to attract them to the Island in that they are a commodity here to us in terms of their skills and the jobs they can do.

"The market is very buoyant, although recruitment is going to be a steady industry in terms that there is always going to be a turnover of staff."

A similar picture is painted over in the Cayman Islands, with the strength of overseas currencies against the dollar, coupled with inflation, impacting on the country's attraction as a tax-free workplace.

The value of major foreign currencies has risen by almost 60 per cent against the dollar and the Cayman Islands dollar, which operates at a fixed 1.25/1 exchange rate to the US currency, over the past five years, with inflation increasing by more than 14 percent.

In order to keep pace with this, salaries have shot up by around 70 percent since 2002.