UK Job Market Report
25 November 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
While overall the jobs market remains subdued, with October vacancies down -0.17% month on month to 859,617, there are reasons for optimism. Steep drops in vacancies in the first half of 2024 appear to have stalled, with marginal improvements seen in July (+1.1%), September (+0.39%) and only a -0.17% drop in October.
Salaries
The highly competitive nature of the market also saw advertised salaries climb for the fifth consecutive month in October, up +0.64% to a yearly high of £39,234. This also represents a +6.19% year-on-year increase, the biggest annual growth since April 2021.
There’s been a slight improvement in salary transparency in October. Some 47.68% of roles listed the salary details as part of the ad, up from 46.34% in September. This still means that more than half of job ads aren’t disclosing salary details, but it is a step in the right direction.
Time to fill
Jobs are posted on Adzuna for an average of 39.5 days before being filled. This represents the highest time-to-fill rate since September 2022 and an increase from the 35.8 days seen in the two months before October.
Competition
The number of jobseekers per vacancy remained at its highest level this year, with 2.08 jobseekers available for every role, up from 1.49 a year ago, and the highest since June 2021 (2.07). This is compounded by the UK’s employment rate rising to 4.3%, up from 4% in May.
Hottest cities
Cambridge remains the top city for job hunters, with the lowest jobseeker to available roles ratio at 0.4, with 2,725 roles available. Guildford comes second with 0.54 and Exeter third with 0.69.
The hardest city to find a role is Bradford, with 9.59 jobseekers per role, followed by Birmingham (5.51) and Luton (5.35).
UK regions
Advertised vacancies are up month-on-month in Northern Ireland (+14.7%), Eastern England (+0.4%), and South East England (+0.2%). Meanwhile, many regions are still experiencing a drop, led by Wales (-3.7%), and North East England (-3.3%).
All regions experienced positive increases in average advertised salaries compared to the same time last year, with London overtaking Yorkshire And The Humber and South West England for the first time with +5.14% growth. East Midlands has also slipped down the table with salary growth in North West England overtaking the region.
UK sectors
With nearly 23,000 Christmas jobs on offer, seasonal hiring has fuelled strong growth in many sectors. Trade & Construction continued to perform strongly in October, with new job adverts rising +8.59% month-on-month. This was accompanied by notable monthly gains in Retail (+6.09%), Hospitality & Catering (+1%) and Travel (+0.8%). Other monthly increases included Teaching (+5.06%), Social Work (+4.82%), Legal (+2.34%), and Creative & Design (+1.69%).
Graduate roles continued to trend upwards in October for the fifth month in a row, +0.1% to 22,916 jobs, and graduate salaries reached a record high of £25,101.
However, October also saw continued declines in many sectors. The hardest hit was Sales (-9.82%). Nevertheless, compared to six months ago, there was still a +6.5% increase in openings. Other sectors like IT (-9.63%) and Energy, Oil & Gas (-8.42%) experiencing monthly falls included PR, Advertising and Marketing (-5.03%), Admin (-3.32%) and Customer Service (-3.03%), Domestic Help & Cleaning (-2.98%), Consulting (-2.62%), Accounting & Finance (-2.43%), Healthcare & Nursing (-2.02%), Maintenance (-1.87%), Property (-1.75%), Charity & Voluntary (-1.32%), Logistics & Warehouse (-1.15%), HR & Recruitment (-0.9%) Engineering (-0.3%), Scientific & QA (-0.23%) and Manufacturing (-0.2%).
Year-on-year trends reveal a similar pattern, with few sectors showing annual growth. Only two sectors experienced a year-on-year increase in vacancies as of October 2024: Teaching jobs, which saw a huge +26.8% increase, followed by a smaller uplift for Legal Jobs (+3.32%).
The majority of sectors experienced a monthly uptick in average advertised salaries, led by Logistics & Warehouse (+3.78%), IT (+2.86%), Accounting & Finance (+2.15%), Admin (+1.65%), Energy, Oil & Gas (+1.5%), Graduate (+1.5%), Property (+1.49%), Trade & Construction (+1.35%), Engineering (+0.85%), Scientific & QA (+0.67%), Manufacturing (+0.65%), Maintenance (+0.64%), PR, Advertising & Marketing (+0.63%) and Customer Service (+0.62%). Only a few sectors saw monthly salaries fall, including Teaching (-0.16%), Retail (-0.55%), Social Work (-1.03%) and Travel (-1.07%).
The yearly declines in roles, which ultimately increase competition, may also explain why salaries in these sectors jumped tremendously in October. Retail salaries are up +14.18% year-on-year – the highest of any sector – followed by Customer Services Jobs (+14.09%) and Admin Jobs (+13.77%). More broadly, all sectors saw yearly salary increases including Social Work (+11.06%), Domestic Help & Cleaning (+10.08%), Logistics & Warehouse (+9.73%), Manufacturing (+8.87%), Accounting & Finance (+8.32%), Maintenance (+8.01%), Hospitality & Catering (+7.1%), Trade & Construction (+7.08%), Energy, Oil & Gas (+7.01%), Charity & Voluntary (+6.27%), Engineering (+6.2%), Creative & Design (+5.64%), Consultancy (+5.51%) and IT (+5.37%). The only exception was Legal which dropped -1.64% – the second month in a row Legal salaries have been below the previous year’s figures.
Sectors where jobs are filled most quickly are Legal (33.9 days) – for the third month in a row, followed by Teaching (34.1 days), whilst the sectors which are the longest to fill continue to be Energy, Oil and Gas and Travel (53.2 days up from 44.4 days the previous month) and Retail (48.3 days). Having previously taken an average of 41.1 days to fill, Graduate roles are now being filled quicker, in 37.7 days.
Trending jobs
For the first time in over a year, Sales Assistant is the most in-demand role on Adzuna according to the platform’s Trending Jobs list, overtaking warehouse work which remained top for 17 straight months. This metric ranks occupations based on their Interest Quotient, which measures how often job postings are viewed relative to other roles. A higher quotient indicates greater demand among jobseekers. In October, Social Care Worker remained in third position, followed by Healthcare Support Worker rose to fourth place, reflecting continued demand in the healthcare sector.
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.