UK Job Market Report
19 August 2024
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 1,000 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 UK 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, Adzuna Intelligence.
Vacancies
UK job vacancies rose +1.1% in July for the first time this year, up to 862,043 compared to June, bringing the first sign of an improvement in prospects to those seeking a new role. Following positive growth figures and the election of a new government, business confidence rebounded in July which has translated through to increased hiring. Compared to July 2023, vacancies are still down -17.69%, which demonstrates that the market still has a long way to go to achieve a full recovery.
Salaries
Average advertised salaries are higher compared to last year, up +2.95% to £38,863 whilst month-on-month average advertised salaries increased marginally, up +0.08%.
While prospects for jobseekers may have improved, salary transparency hits rock bottom in July. The proportion of job adverts with salaries has fallen to 46.3% in July, the lowest recorded figure since Adzuna started tracking this metric in 2016. Over half (52.3%) of job adverts do not include any salary information.
Time to fill
Jobs are filling at the fastest pace this year, with an average time-to-fill of 35.6 days in July, down from 36 days last month. The sector with the shortest live job posting time is Property (32.0 days), followed by Teaching (32.2) and Legal (32.6). Meanwhile, Travel has the longest live job posting time at 48.8 days on average, followed by Energy, Oil & Gas (44.8) and IT (40.0).
Competition
In a sign of further contractions in the job market, there are now 2.09 jobseekers per vacancy, the highest it has been since May 2021 during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Hottest cities
Cambridge remains the top city for job hunters, with the lowest jobseeker to available roles ratio at 0.37, with 7,136 roles available. Guildford comes second with 0.55 and Exeter third with 0.69.
The hardest city to find a role is Bradford, with 8.92 jobseekers per role, followed by Birmingham (4.95) and Middlesbrough (4.93).
UK regions
Advertised vacancies jumped back up month-on-month in 10 regions in June 2024, led by North East England (+2.24%) and East Midlands (+1.88%).
In contrast, vacancies continued to fall in Northern Ireland (-3.07%) and Wales (-0.38%).
Northern Ireland continues to experience sluggish annual wage growth with advertised average salaries rising only +1.08% in July compared to the same period last year. Whilst Wales, which has often been bottom of the table when it comes to annual advertised salary increases, has overtaken Northern Ireland and is close behind South East England in July.
The Midlands regions have experienced the highest percentage of annual salary increases. The West Midlands overtook both Eastern England and East Midlands, with average salaries increases at +5.62% compared to July 2023.
UK sectors
Domestic Help & Cleaning roles have helped to boost growth in monthly job vacancies, with roles increasing by +12.72% MoM in July, following a +7.8% MoM increase in roles in June. Meanwhile, the Graduate job market continues to grow consistently, rising +3.7% month-over-month to 21,399 vacancies in July.
This was also followed by growth in sectors including Legal (+3.03%), Manufacturing (+2.74%), Logistics & Warehouse (+2.15%) and Creative & Design (+1.6%).
However several sectors continued to see vacancies fall, including Charity & Voluntary (-8.04%), Travel (-4.74%), Hospitality & Catering (-4.58%), Trade & Construction (-4.57%), Property (-4.53%), Accounting & Finance (-3.84%) and Healthcare & Nursing (-3.67%).
Similar to the last few months, two sectors experienced annual increases in job vacancies: Teaching (+14.01%) and Travel (+1.39%). Meanwhile, the majority saw job vacancies fall year-on-year, including Trade & Construction (-50.05%), Admin (-48.67%), PR, Advertising & Marketing (-40.56%), Healthcare & Nursing (-33.17%) and Domestic Help & Cleaning (-32.49%). Despite an annual decline in Graduate vacancies (-12.1%), the gap has narrowed significantly, marking the smallest annual drop since September 2022.
Despite overall average advertised salaries staying broadly flat in July, many sectors saw salaries increase month-on-month, including Charity & Voluntary (+2.26%), Travel (+1.95%), Logistics & Warehouse (+1.75%), Consultancy (+1.61%), Customer Service (+1.43%), Maintenance (+0.99%) and Creative & Design (+0.77%). However, this growth was offset by declines in sectors such as Legal (-1.04%), Retail (-0.37%) and Teaching (-0.35%).
Year-on-year, only one sector experienced a decrease in average advertised salaries, IT, with salaries falling -3.67% compared to July 2023. The sectors that saw the largest annual increase included Energy, Oil & Gas (+18.03%), Social Work (+11.76%), Retail (+10.86%) and Domestic Help & Cleaning (+8.85%).
The fastest sector for hiring is Voluntary at 27.3 days followed by Property, at 32 days, whilst the longest sectors are Travel at 48.8 days and Energy, Oil & Gas at 44.8 days.
Trending jobs
Warehouse work has been the most in-demand role on Adzuna for 14 months in a row, topping the platform’s Trending Jobs list. This metric tracks demand for a wide range of occupations and designates an Interest Quotient for each role. The higher the quotient, the more in demand those roles are among Adzuna jobseekers.
Cleaner came second in July, the second month in a row that this role has been this high. Social Care Worker which has traditionally been an in-demand role has fallen to sixth place as Sales Assistant took over as the third-most searched-for job.
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 19 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 1,000 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, Adzuna Intelligence.