UK Job Market Report
24 July 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
June 2023 saw 1,059,153 UK advertised vacancies, up slightly +0.48% from 1,050,930 in May, in the fifth consecutive month of rising job postings. Total advertised vacancies are -11.8% lower than 1,201,276 in June 2022, with the year-on-year gap shrinking from -16.8% in May and -19.5% in April.
Salaries
Advertised UK salaries averaged £37,807 in June 2023, holding steady (+0.15%) from £37,750 in May and up +3.6% from £36,493 in June 2022. Skills shortages and the cost of living crisis mean employees are continuing to put pressure on companies to give pay rises. Whilst UK inflation has started to fall, there are concerns that high wages will mean that there will be no immediate relief from high interest rates in the next few months.
UK salary transparency continues to decline, with just 50.2% of jobs ads stating a salary in June 2023, down from 50.9% in May and slipping from 58.3% in June 2022. It marks the lowest level for salary disclosure within job postings since we began collecting data in 2016.
Time to fill
Job vacancies are being filled faster than at any time since Adzuna began collecting data in 2016. On average, UK job postings remained open for just 34.6 days in March 2023, down from 34.9 in February and 42.3 in March 2022.
Competition
There were 1.47 jobseekers per vacancy in June 2023, up from 1.45 in May. By comparison, June 2022 saw 1.29 jobseekers per vacancy, with competition for jobs rising year-on-year.
Hottest cities
Cambridge was still the top city to find work in June 2023, with an average of 0.25 jobseekers per vacancy, meaning four times the number of jobs on offer than people to fill them. Guildford (0.34), Exeter (0.42), Oxford (0.55) and Reading (0.58) rounded out the top 5 hottest cities to find work.
By contrast, Bradford saw the toughest competition for jobs in June 2023 with 5.51 jobseekers per vacancy, followed by Rochdale (4.05), Middlesbrough (3.77), Luton (3.28) and Sunderland (3.24).
UK regions
Regionally, Scotland and Wales continue to see strong growth in job postings year-on-year, with advertised vacancies up +11.5% and +4.9% respectively. Meanwhile London (-18.3%), the East Midlands (-17.0%) and Eastern England (-16.9%) have seen the largest falls.
Northern Ireland continues to see the highest annual growth in salaries, up +10.2% since last June, the sixth consecutive monthly rise for the region. Yorkshire and The Humber reclaimed second place with salaries increasing +7.4%, ahead of East Midlands (+7.2%) and Wales (+7.1%). London continues to be the only region not experiencing an increase in salaries, however, the gap has fallen from being down -2.1% in May to only -1.3% in June.
UK sectors
Nearly 80% of sectors are still experiencing annual falls in vacancies compared to this time last year, including HR & Recruitment (-48.1%), PR, Advertising and Marketing (-28.6%) and Sales (-21.2%). However, sectors including Engineering (+4.0%) and Energy, Oil and Gas (+11.9%) are experiencing annual growth in hiring.
The biggest annual increase in salaries sector-wise was for Property roles, +14.4% compared to June 2022, despite vacancies being down by -22.3% year-on-year. Travel (+11.6%), Domestic Help and Cleaning (+11.6%) and Maintenance (+9.3%) also experienced salary increases compared to last year. In fact, few sectors saw salaries decline year-on-year, apart from HR and Recruitment (-3.8%), IT (-3.2%), and Scientific and QA (-4.5%). The recent public sector pay deal of 5-7% struck in July will influence the overall salary picture in the coming months.
Looking at the latest data on the average duration of job ads, for March 2023, PR, Creative & Design jobs took the longest to fill at an average of 40.6 days, followed by Scientific & QA openings (39.8) and Graduate jobs (39.7). For the third month in a row, Voluntary jobs are filling the fastest of any sector, with positions open for an average of just 27.8 days.
Trending jobs
The data also tracks the most popular occupations among UK jobseekers. Warehouse work has overtaken Social Care as the occupation attracting the highest level of interest in June 2023, with an interest quotient of 147.3. Compared to May, there has also been an increase in jobseekers looking for cleaning jobs.
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.