UK Job Market Report
27 November 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 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
Advertised vacancies climbed to 1,026,434 in October, up +0.4% compared to September, in the first positive growth since June this year. Vacancies remain lower than last year’s levels, down -5.1%, but the year-on-year gap is slowly closing.
Salaries
Advertised salaries are continuing to fall, following the downward trend in inflation. Annual advertised salaries dropped -0.4% this month to £36,946 in October 2023, the fourth consecutive monthly fall from a 2023 high of £37,807 this June. Year-on-year, advertised salaries remain +1.1% higher than they were in October 2022 (£36,431).
There are still more advertised jobs without salaries (51.8% in October 2023), compared to ads with (48.9%), as the fall in salary transparency continues throughout 2023.
Time to fill
The average time to fill vacancies has fallen to its lowest level this year, at 34.5 days on average in July 2023. This is down slightly from 34.6 in June and more obviously year-on-year from 41.6 in July 2022.
Competition
The number of jobseekers per vacancy has risen slightly to 1.50 in October, with the metric staying rather consistent all year, hovering between 1.51 and 1.45. This is higher than last year’s figures, of 1.38, pointing to more people continuing to look for work across the UK.
Hottest cities
Cambridge is still the top place to look for work with nearly 7,000 available roles and just under 2,300 jobseekers – giving it an average of 0.26 jobseekers per vacancy. Bradford remains the hardest place to look for work, with 5.69 jobseekers per vacancy, followed by Rochdale (3.69) and Middlesborough (3.64).
UK regions
Wales overtakes Scotland to be the region with the strongest annual growth in advertised vacancies, up +12.7% year-on-year to 32,313 in October, followed by Scotland (+9.9%) and Northern Ireland (+8.4%). London and Eastern England are seeing the biggest slowdowns, -12.5% and -11.0% respectively.
For the first time since February, London is not the only region to see a year-on-year decrease in average advertised salaries. Wales experienced a -0.7% fall in average advertised salaries. On a monthly basis, growth is slowing in other regions including Yorkshire and the Humber (down -0.7% month on month) and North East England (down -1.4% month on month).
Northern Ireland continues to be the region experiencing the highest growth in annual salaries, up +6.7% compared to the same time in 2022, with East Midlands coming second (+5.9%).
UK sectors
Jobs continue to fall in most sectors, but there has been positive growth in hiring for retail and service sectors. Retail job vacancies have increased +8.3% compared to September, with companies continuing to hire extra staff ahead of the Black Friday and Christmas shopping periods. There has also been an increase in Customer Service roles available (+2.5%), Hospitality & Catering (+0.8%), and Logistics & Warehouse (+4.4%).
Graduate job vacancies appear to be recovering from their dramatic fall earlier this year, rising +15.1% month-on-month to reach 26,771 graduate job openings in October. However, year-on-year, vacancies are still down -28.4%, demonstrating that it continues to be a tough job market for new graduates. Energy, Oil & Gas roles continue on a downward spiral, -3.9% compared to September and down -13.2% over the past six months, with Legal jobs suffering the biggest monthly fall (-6.6%).
As a result of the continued fall in advertised salaries, many sectors saw salaries fall month-on-month in October, including Admin (-0.8%), HR & Recruitment (-1.0%), Healthcare & Nursing (-1.1%) and IT (-1.5%). Despite this, there was some positive movement amongst some sectors, with salaries improving month-on-month within the Legal (+1.6%), Energy, Oil & Gas (+2.8%) and Trade & Construction (+1.4%) industries.
The majority of sectors have experienced an annual increase in advertised salaries including Manufacturing (+8.5%), Customer Service (+4.8%) and Hospitality and Catering (+3.3%), with only IT and HR & Recruitment experiencing annual falls (-9.6% and -6.0% respectively).
Looking at the latest data on the average duration of job ads for July 2023, Voluntary jobs (28.7) and Admin and Teaching vacancies (both 31.1) are taking the shortest time to fill, rising to 41.4 days and 42.4 for Logistics & Warehouse and Travel respectively.
Trending jobs
The data also tracks the most popular occupations among UK jobseekers. Warehouse work continues to be the top trending job for the fifth month in a row.
Lorry driving roles came second, the same as September, followed by Social Care Worker roles.
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.