Top 30 hottest jobs to apply for in 2024

With the cost of living continuing to bite hard, we’re all looking for ways to boost our earnings or to make our job hunt as easy as possible. Whether it’s looking for the best-paid role or jobs in high demand, here’s what you need to know about this year’s job market. 

Each year, we look at over one million jobs in our database and compare them to the previous year to decide the hottest jobs jobs to apply for in 2024:

• Trending jobs of 2024
• Top growing jobs that pay over £60,000
• Jobs seeing the biggest salary increases (that don’t need a degree!)

Trending jobs of 2024

Our data explored the roles that are fastest growing in 2024. These 30 jobs have all seen increased hiring in the last year, so could be great roles to consider if you’re on the job hunt or considering a career change.

Companies are investing more than ever in finding out what makes their customers tick. Market research interviewers topped our list with roles advertised increasing by +472% since last year, and nearly 2,000 job openings up for grabs.

Also in our top five are childcare practitioners (+221%), business administration apprentices (211%), recruitment consultants (+160%), and French teachers (+143%).

French teachers aren’t the only teaching jobs that surged recently. Economics teachers (8th, +115%), art and design teachers (9th, +109%), Spanish teachers (17th, +91%), psychology lecturers (20th, +86%), and PPA cover teachers (27th, +71%) all made our top thirty.

Newly qualified teachers quitting the UK to teach abroad due to pay and conditions are exacerbating teacher shortages. Meanwhile, the UK government is missing its teacher-training targets year-on-year. In 2022-23, the undershoot in trainee entrants for secondary school was 41%. 

Elsewhere, catering jobs such as relief chef manager (16th, +91%), head pastry chef (19th, +86%), commercial catering engineer (21st, +83%), and development chef (29, +67%) have seen huge increases in demand.

Brexit has no doubt had a huge impact on this surge in job postings. Since March 2020, almost 300,000 hospitality employees have left their jobs and returned to their home countries. Covid too impacted an industry in crisis, with furloughed employees during government lockdowns moving into other roles. 

Last year, hospitality saw some increases, but comparatively far less than this year. 

The full ranking is as follows:

Top growing jobs that pay over £60,000

With everyone feeling the pinch, it’s more important than ever to earn as much as possible. So which jobs are in high demand and bringing home substantially higher than average salaries? 

Open optometrist roles more than doubled in the last twelve months, but the average salary slightly declined from £64,553 to £64,246. 

Also in our top five are occupational therapists (+33%, £70,137), client managers (+30%, £67,610), solicitors (+30%, £80,032), and dental practitioners (+27.2%, £105,638). 

If you’ve got ambitions of taking home over and above £100k like dental practitioners, financial advisors (10th, +22%, £102,073) and tax directors (21st, +10.5%, £107,031) also made our list. 

Although a lot of high-paying roles are advertising more roles, of our top 25, 11 had a year-on-year decrease in salary. The most substantial decline is the salaries of specialised doctors (9th, +24%) with the average advertised salary decreasing from £130,024 to £89,354, over £40,000!

The full ranking is as follows:

Jobs seeing the biggest salary increases (that don’t need a degree!)

It can feel like getting a degree is the be-all and end-all when it comes to securing a high-paying role. We looked at the top twenty jobs that don’t need a degree at all, that are getting bigger paycheques compared to last year. 

With a cost of living crisis, and inflation at 4.3%, earning more money has never been so important. A security manager’s salary has seen the biggest leap (£45,921), with the average advertised salary on job ads up +53% year-on-year.

Coming next are train drivers (£34,689), casino gaming managers (£96,000), and landscape designers (£50,000) which have all seen significant pay increases of over +30% year-on-year. 

Security managers aren’t the only security-based roles that have seen a substantial increase in salary over the last 12 months. Jobseekers who are looking for roles as locksmiths (7th, +25%, £36,204) or prison officers (12th, +16%, £31,419) have seen salaries soar. 

Working as a casino manager is the job on this list with the highest salary, with buying managers (9th, +18%, £69,446) and food safety inspectors (8th, +27%, £60,522) also taking home healthy pay packets. 

With none of these roles requiring a degree, you’ve got to remember that there won’t be any student loans decreasing take-home salary either! 

The full ranking is as follows:

Table 1: Jobs seeing the biggest salary increases that don’t need a degree