UK Job Market Report
01 June 2023
Adzuna has the most complete index of UK job vacancies covering all regions in the UK, based on every job vacancy advertised online in the UK from over 1000 sources. This data is then normalised, de-duplicated, mix-adjusted and outliers are removed in real time to give an accurate, complete, up to the minute view of the job market. Our Job Market Report tracks advertised vacancies, average advertised salaries, competition for jobs, trending roles, time to fill positions, and more.
We also supply real-time data to the Number 10 Dashboard, the Cabinet Office and the Office for National Statistics labour market indices. For more granular data breakdowns at a local authority level, job title, or skill level, please contact our labour market intelligence division.
Vacancies
There were 1,045,949 UK advertised vacancies in April 2023, remaining flat at +0.2% from 1,044,112 in March 2023, but -19.5% lower compared to 1,298,581 in April 2022. It represented the third consecutive monthly recovery in job postings.
Salaries
Average advertised UK salaries sat at £37,530 in March 2023, up +0.5% from £37,353 in February and up 2.6% from £36,568 in March 2022. The rate of advertised pay increases remains significantly lower than inflation.
Salary transparency in the UK improved marginally month-on-month but is still trending downwards. Just over half (51.5%) of jobs ads disclosed a salary in April 2023, up from 50.8% in March but significantly lower than 61.4% a year ago. The last two months have seen the lowest level of salary disclosure in job ads since we began collecting data in April 2016.
Time to fill
The start of the year saw job vacancies filling more quickly across the UK. On average, job postings remained open for 36.6 days in January 2023, with vacancies filling significantly quicker than in January 2022 (43.8). The beginning of the pandemic saw a peak in the duration of job ads, with advertised vacancies taking an average of 55.1 days to fill in May 2020. Aside from December 2022 (35.3), job vacancies are currently being filled at the fastest rate seen since data collection began in 2016.
Competition
There were 1.53 jobseekers per vacancy in April 2023, up from 1.49 in March. By comparison, April 2022 saw 1.26 jobseekers per vacancy, as competition for jobs has stiffened year-on-year.
Hottest cities
The top city to find work in April 2023 was Cambridge, home to an average of just 0.26 jobseekers per vacancy, meaning four times the number of jobs on offer than people to fill them. Guildford (0.36), Exeter (0.45), Oxford (0.57) and Reading (0.59) rounded out the top 5.
By contrast, the cities with toughest competition for jobs in April 2023 were Bradford (5.94), Rochdale (4.39), Middlesbrough (4.29), Sunderland (3.66) and Wolverhampton (3.50).
UK regions
Hiring activity has fallen year-on-year in 10 out of 12 UK regions, with the largest decline in advertised job postings in the East Midlands (-27.3%), South West (-24.0%) and West Midlands (-23.6%). By comparison, Northern Ireland (+5.6%) and Scotland (+5.3%) have both seen advertised vacancies rise.
Advertised salaries are also increasing across the regions. London is the only region that saw average advertised salaries fall between April 2022 and April 2023, by -3.1%. Northern Ireland had the highest year-on-year growth, up +9.7%, followed by Yorkshire and the Humber (+8.8%) and the North East (+7.9%).
UK sectors
Hiring activity has increased year-on-year in just two sectors: Teaching (+25.0%) and Energy, Oil & Gas (+11.4%). Every other sector has seen an annual dip in advertised vacancies.
By comparison, average advertised salaries increased year-on-year in April 2023 across 24 of 27 sectors, including Social work (+21.6%), Healthcare & Nursing (+17.1%), and Property (+14.1%). Three sectors saw salaries fall over the same period: IT (-4.6%), Scientific & QA (-3.7%), and HR & Recruitment (-3.6%).
Looking at the latest data on the average duration of job ads, for January 2023, Graduate jobs took the longest to fill at an average of 41.0 days, followed by Creative & Design jobs (40.6) and Travel openings (40.3). Voluntary jobs filled the fastest, with openings advertised for an average of just 29.9 days.
Trending jobs
The data also tracks the most popular occupations among UK jobseekers. The role with the highest level of interest in April 2023 was Social Care Worker, with an interest quotient of 166.3. The next most popular roles were Warehouse Worker (122.5) and Lorry Driver (114.4).
The data that Adzuna produce is an exceptionally rich and industry-leading source of real time insights into the labour market, local economies and what employers want. We’ve worked with the Adzuna team and their data across a range of projects, including labour market analysis, policy research and workforce planning and would highly recommend them.
Tony Wilson
Director
Institute for Employment Studies
Methodology
About Adzuna
Adzuna is a smarter, more transparent job search engine used by tens of millions of visitors per month. We love using the awesome power of technology to bring together every job in one place, help match people to better, more fulfilling jobs and keep Britain working.
Adzuna supplies real-time data to the Number 10 Dashboard, the Cabinet Office and Office for National Statistics labour market indices. In 2018, Adzuna won the contract to run Find a job, one of the British government’s most used online services.
Adzuna.co.uk was founded in 2011 by Andrew Hunter and Doug Monro, formerly of eBay, Gumtree, Qype and Zoopla and is backed by leading Venture Capital firms LocalGlobe, Index Ventures and Smedvig Capital.
We’ve spent a decade developing smarter, more transparent job search so jobseekers worldwide (we’re in 20 countries) can zero in on the right role faster.
About the Job Market Report
Adzuna has the most complete index of UK job vacancies covering all regions in the UK. The technology collects every job vacancy advertised online in the UK from over 1000 sources. This data is then normalised, de-duplicated, mix-adjusted and outliers are removed in real time to give users an accurate, complete, up to the minute view of the job market.
Claimant count data is based on the latest Labour Market Statistics released by the ONS. The city areas referred to in this study are the top 50 cities in the UK, ranked by comparing the job vacancies in Adzuna’s comprehensive search index of over 1,000,000 live jobs to the number of claimants in each city from the latest ONS data. The full Jobseeker’s Allowance claimant count statistics are available for download here: www.nomisweb.co.uk.
The interest quotient for key roles is calculated by comparing how many views job postings for different occupations on Adzuna receive over a given month and comparing this to the overall job posting views over the same period. It provides a proxy for talent supply in the jobs market.
For more granular data breakdowns at a local authority level, job title, or skill level, please contact our labour market intelligence division.