UK Job Market Report
28 October 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 increased marginally in September driven by gains in sectors including Trade & Construction, Logistics & Warehouse and Graduate. The small increase in advertised roles – up +0.39% from August to 861,085 – coupled with falling inflation and growth in GDP, offers more reasons for confidence in the jobs market than in recent months.
Salaries
Advertised annual salaries increased in September, up +0.24% monthly to £38,984 and up +5.1% compared to the same time last year. Yet salary transparency remains at record low levels, with just 46.34% of jobs posted with salary, compared to 53.66% posted without.
Time to fill
Jobs are posted on Adzuna for an average of 35.8 days before being filled, the same as in last month. Sectors where jobs are filled most quickly are Legal (31.8 days), Teaching (32.2 days) and Admin (32.3 days), whilst the sectors which are the longest to fill include Energy, Oil and Gas and Travel (44.4 days), Graduate (41.1 days) and Healthcare & Nursing (38.8 days).
Competition
While the increase in roles comes as unemployment fell slightly to 4.0%, the number of jobseekers per available roles was up to 2.08 in September from 2.07 in August.
Hottest cities
Cambridge remains the top city for job hunters, with the lowest jobseeker to available roles ratio at 0.4, with 6,689 roles available. Guildford comes second with 0.55 and Exeter third with 0.69.
The hardest city to find a role is Bradford, with 9.43 jobseekers per role, followed by Birmingham (5.43) and Luton (5.22).
UK regions
Jobseeker-to-vacancy ratio appears to have stabilised at 2.09 in September. As a result, jobseeker per vacancy rations stayed broadly stable across the regions with East Midlands experiencing no change at all.
Advertised vacancies are up month-on-month in Northern Ireland (+24.8%) and Eastern England (+0.24%). Meanwhile, many regions are still experiencing a drop, including North East England (-3.3%), Wales (-2.3%), and Yorkshire and the Humber (-1.48%).
Meanwhile, 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 +4.03% growth. East Midlands has also slipped down the table with salary growth in North West England overtaking the region.
UK sectors
After experiencing a -2.62% fall in vacancies month-on-month in August, Trade & Construction experienced a momentous surge in new job adverts, up +14.95% in September. This was followed by increases in Charity & Voluntary (+6.57%), Logistics & Warehouse (+4.76%), Graduate (+4.6%), Creative & Design (+3.54%), Hospitality & Catering (+3.27%), Social Work (+2.46%), Retail (+1.16%), Teaching (+0.91%), Property (+0.86%) and Healthcare & Nursing (+0.13%). The increase in Graduate roles is particularly positive for younger jobseekers. There are now nearly 23,000 Graduate roles on Adzuna, the highest number recorded this year, with the average Graduate salary at £24,736 – the highest since Adzuna started tracking in April 2016.
However, the majority of sectors continued to see monthly advertised job numbers fall, which depressed the overall figures. As summer holidays have ended, Travel experienced a -7.36% job decrease in September, followed by Energy, Oil & Gas (-6.13%), Domestic Help & Cleaning (-4.23%), Customer Service (-4.16%), Accounting & Finance (-3.8%), Sales (-3.76%), PR, Advertising & Marketing (-2.7%), Engineering (-2.6%), Scientific & QA (-1.77%), Consultancy (-1.52%), HR & Recruitment (-1.12%), Admin (-1.07%), Legal (-0.57%), and IT (-0.22%).
Very few sectors experienced an annual increase in vacancies compared to the same time last year. Teaching roles have continued to surge, up +25.96% compared to last September, whilst Logistics & Warehouse (+1.62%) and Sales (+0.73%) also saw slight uplifts. The increase in Logistics & Warehouse roles both monthly and annually will likely be because companies will start preparing for increased demand ahead of the festive season. This was contrasted by widespread falls in vacancies year-on-year particularly in sectors such as Admin (-47.36%) and Trade & Construction (-39.36%).
As average advertised salaries slowly creep up, the majority of sectors experienced modest monthly increases, including Graduate (+2.0%), Trade & Construction (+1.41%), Customer Service (+0.9%), Admin (+0.89%), Creative & Design (+0.83%), Sales (+0.7%), Engineering (+0.68%), Maintenance (+0.63%), Charity & voluntary (+0.6%), IT (+0.57%), PR, Advertising & Marketing (+0.51%), Logistics & Warehouse (+0.51%), Consultancy (+0.47%), HR & Recruitment (+0.38%), Accounting & Finance (+0.36%), Manufacturing (+0.32%), Scientific & QA (+0.15%) and Domestic Help & Cleaning (+0.03%).
However, there was still a number of sectors where average advertised salaries fell in September, in particular Travel (-2.63%), Energy, Oil & Gas (-1.93%), Social Work (-1.89%), Hospitality & Catering (-1.42%), Teaching (-0.74%), Retail (-0.66%), Legal (-0.64%), Property (-0.35%) and Healthcare & Nursing (-0.19%).
Amidst a strong annual increase of +5.1% in the UK’s overall average advertised salary, the majority of sectors saw significant annual salary growth, including Retail (+14.28%), Social Work (+13.85%), Customer Service (+12.89%), Admin (+10.99%), Domestic Help & Cleaning (+9.81%), Energy, Oil & Gas (+8.4%), Manufacturing (+8.16%) and Hospitality & Catering (+8.09). Only one sector experienced an annual drop in advertised salaries – Legal (-0.37%).
The fastest sector for hiring is Voluntary at 27.6 days followed by Legal, at 31.8 days, whilst the longest sectors are Energy, Oil & Gas and Travel at 44.4 days.
Trending jobs
Warehouse worker has been the most in-demand role on Adzuna for 16 months in a row, topping the platform’s Trending Jobs list. Sales Assistant overtook Cleaner to second place, and Social Care Worker followed in third. Demand for Cleaner roles fell, with the role now in sixth place, but Healthcare Support Worker rose to fourth place. 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.
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.