UK Job Market Report
24 June 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
The UK jobs market remained flat in May, with monthly job vacancies up +0.01% to 854,248 despite hopes that GDP growth in the three months to April (+0.7%) would give companies more confidence in hiring. While there was a marginal improvement in month-on-month vacancies, annual vacancies continue to decline, down -18.72% compared to the same time last year.
Salaries
Monthly salary figures have also fallen for the first time since October 2023, down -0.11% to £38,765, despite the recent introduction of the National Living Wage to £11.44/hour. While slightly weaker salaries could help relieve some of the tightness in the UK labour market, it may also suggest increasing vacancies for entry or junior-level roles with lower salaries. In comparison, annual salaries are still up +2.69% compared to May 2023.
Salary transparency figures remain stable, with 49.5% of job adverts including salary information and 50.5% without, which is similar to April’s figures (49.6% with, 50.4% without).
Time to fill
The average duration of job postings has fallen again to 36.9 days, down from 39.0 days the month before, as businesses are keen to snap up skilled staff.
Competition
Competition is more fierce in May, with 1.91 jobseekers per vacancy, up from 1.89 in April 2024 and the highest since August 2021. This follows the recent news that unemployment reached its highest level in two and a half years, at 4.4%.
Hottest cities
Cambridge remains the UK’s top place to find a role with only 0.34 jobseekers per role, with 7,267 jobs available. This is followed by Guildford (0.49) and Exeter (0.63).
Bradford remains the hardest city to find a role, with 7.94 jobseekers per role. Rochdale and Middlesborough also have high jobseeker-to-role ratios, at 4.86 and 4.57 respectively.
UK regions
Advertised vacancies jumped back up month-on-month in seven regions in May 2024, led by South East England (+1.2%) and North East England (+1.1%).
In contrast, vacancies continued to fall in Northern Ireland (-1.5%), Yorkshire and the Humber (-0.7%), North West England (-0.5%), London (-0.3%), and Wales (-0.2%).
The East Midlands experienced the greatest annual salary growth for the seventh month in a row, but there are signs that this growth may be slowing. In April, salaries in the region experienced a +6.68% increase year-on-year but this slowed to +6.03% in May.
South East England has slumped down the table – last month, salaries increased +2.21% compared to the same time last year, but this has since slowed to +1.35%, putting the region below London, but ahead of Wales.
UK sectors
The Graduate sector saw the first monthly increase in vacancies in three months, up +3.3% to just over 20,000 roles, ahead of new graduates entering the workforce following June graduations. A number of other sectors also saw monthly jobs increases including Travel (+11.03%), Teaching (+7.32%), Legal (+4.34%) and Manufacturing (+3.78%), which helped propel the wider market to its first positive growth in months.
Whilst sectors that are still facing a slowdown when it comes to hiring include PR, Advertising & Marketing (-8.18%), Admin (-6.52%) and Healthcare & Nursing (-4.14%), causing the monthly gains to be only minimal in May.
Year-on-year, Travel and Teaching continue to be the only two sectors to experience an
an annual increase in available vacancies, +6.22% and +4.32% respectively. Meanwhile, the Logistics & Warehouse sector saw the smallest YoY decrease in vacancies (-4.22%), compared to sectors such as Domestic Help & Cleaning (-48.97%), Trade & Construction (-48.65%) and PR, Advertising & Marketing (-47.2%) which continue to experience large falls in available vacancies.
Despite monthly salaries falling for the first time since last year, the majority of sectors experienced small increases in salary month-on-month including Domestic Help & Cleaning (+2.19%), HR & Recruitment (+1.55%), Teaching (+1.11%) and Logistics & Warehouse (+1.01%). Only three sectors saw monthly salaries fall in May: Legal (-1.47%), Travel (-1.19%) and Creative & Design (-1.18%).
Salaries continued to rise annually for nearly all the sectors Adzuna tracks including a nearly 20% increase compared to last May for Energy, Oil & Gas (+19.32%), with Social Work (+11.93%), Retail (+9.57%) and Manufacturing (+9.52%) also experiencing positive annual growth in salaries. Only two sectors saw salaries fall further year-on-year, IT (-5.33%) and Graduate (-0.2%).
The fastest sector for hiring is Legal at 32.5 days followed by teaching, at 33.2 days, whilst the longest sectors are Energy, Oil & Gas at 51.6 days and IT, at 41.6 days.
Trending jobs
Warehouse work has topped Adzuna’s Trending Jobs list every month for the past year. 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.
Healthcare support worker came second, followed by Social care worker and Cleaner.
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.