UK Job Market Report
30 September 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
Following a rebound in new roles in July, August was another sluggish month for job hunters with advertised vacancies falling -0.5% MoM to 857,765, and down -17.46% YoY. This was coupled with an increasing number of claimants, with 154,000 claimants entering the jobs market between June 2024 and August 2024, following a surge in redundancies and ongoing long-term sickness.
Salaries
Salaries continue to trend upwards with a minor increase in advertised average salary to £38,892, +0.07% MoM and +3.17% YoY compared to August 2023.
Salary transparency continues to be at some of the lowest levels Adzuna has recorded since 2016, with 53.02% of job adverts posted without salary information. Though this is a slight decline from July’s figures, it demonstrates how tough it is for job hunters to find the right role for them.
Time to fill
In a further sign of the tightness of the UK job market, the average duration of postings has increased to 35.8 days, which demonstrates that companies may be becoming more cautious about making new offers. The shortest duration of job postings is for Legal, at 31.3 days, followed by Property (32.2) and Teaching (32.3). The sectors with the longest duration of job postings are Energy, Oil & Gas (45.0), Customer Service (41.3) and IT (40.6).
Competition
A tightening UK jobs market saw competition for new roles reach a three-year peak in August. With 2.09 jobseekers per vacancy last month, following another monthly fall in vacancies and a slight increase in unemployment, the UK jobs market is entering a period of stagnation.
Hottest cities
Cambridge remains the top city for job hunters, with the lowest jobseeker to available roles ratio at 0.38, with 6,784 roles available. Guildford comes second with 0.54 and Exeter third with 0.69.
The hardest city to find a role is Bradford, with 9.12 jobseekers per role, followed by Birmingham (5.22) and Luton (5.01).
UK regions
Jobseekers in the South West and South East of England have a distinct advantage, with fewer than 1.5 jobseekers per vacancy. By contrast, jobseekers in Northern Ireland face the toughest competition, with 5.62 jobseekers per vacancy, significantly higher than other regions. The North East of England follows with 3.56 jobseekers per vacancy.
Advertised vacancies are down month-on-month in all regions except Ireland in August 2024, led by West Midlands (-3.2%), Wales (-2.4%), and North West England (-2.4%).
Meanwhile, West Midlands remained the top region for average salary growth in August, compared to August 2023, ahead of the East Midlands. Eastern England fell to fifth place, with North West England rising to third, with average salaries increasing by +5.22% to £37,684.
Wales has slumped to the bottom of the table, with average salaries only increasing by +1.4% compared to August 2023, below South East England and London.
UK sectors
After many sectors rebounded in July, August brought sharp monthly declines in advertised vacancies in key sectors. Travel was the worst hit, with vacancies falling by -10.94%, followed by Sales (-6.4%), Accounting (-6.01%) and Energy, Oil & Gas (-5.58%). Over half of sectors saw vacancies decline monthly, including Retail (-4.53%), Consultancy (-2.72%), Trade & Construction (-2.62%), Scientific & QA (-2.07%), Engineering (-2.05%), IT (-1.86%), Customer Service (-0.75%), PR, Advertising & Marketing (-0.73%), Admin (-0.72%), and Teaching (-0.24%).
However, there was some positive growth in 13 key sectors, particularly Graduate which saw advertised vacancies increase monthly by +2.3%, the fourth month in a row, which is good news for many of this year’s 900,000 university graduates. Domestic Help & Cleaning saw the largest monthly increase in roles to +8.88%. Other sectors with a rise in roles were Hospitality & Catering (+5.52%), Logistics & Warehouse (+4.35%), Creative & Design (+4.13%), Social Work (+3.95%), Healthcare & Nursing (+3.27%), Charity & Voluntary (+2.94%), Legal (+2.35%), Property (+1.99%), Manufacturing (+1.72%), Maintenance (+1.59%) and HR & Recruitment (+1.34%).
Following the continued downward trend for vacancies YoY, there were again only two sectors that experienced an annual increase in roles: Teaching (+20.69%) and Sales (+2.73%). Travel jobs fell annually for the first time in a few months, down -7.71% compared to August 2023. The sectors with the largest annual fall in vacancies included Trade & Construction (-50.58%), Admin (-48.82%) and PR, Advertising & Marketing (-37.54%), whilst sectors with the smallest fall were Logistics & Warehouse (-2.54%), Graduate (-6.7%) and Legal (-8.21%).
When it comes to advertised salaries, the majority of sectors experienced monthly increases in August, including Customer Service (+1.58%), Admin (+1.25%), PR, Advertising & Marketing (+1.03%). IT (+0.75%), Engineering (+0.55%), Sales (+0.55%), Hospitality & Catering (+0.54%) Maintenance (+0.54%), Logistics & Warehouse (+0.43%), Accounting (+0.42%), Graduate (+0.4%), Domestic Help & Cleaning (+0.35%), HR & Recruitment (+0.25%), Healthcare & Nursing (+0.14%), Travel (+0.12%) and Legal (0.1%). However, a handful of sectors did experience salary decreases, including Energy, Oil & Gas (-3.12%), Retail (-1%) and Creative & Design (-0.98%).
As overall average advertised salaries continued to increase YoY, so did sector salaries. The biggest increase annually was for Social Work (+12.32%), followed by Energy, Oil + Gas (11.96%), Retail (+11.51%) Customer Service (+9.99%), Domestic Help & Cleaning (+9.44%) and Admin (+9.01%). Sectors which experienced smaller gains include Hospitality & Catering (+8.05%), Manufacturing (+7.53%), Charity & Voluntary (+6.45%) and Travel (+5.74%). IT was the only sector to see salaries fall annually, -2.29%, compared to the same time last year.
The fastest sector for hiring is Voluntary at 28.5 days followed by Legal, at 31.3 days, whilst the longest sectors are Energy, Oil & Gas at 45.0 days and Customer Services at 41.3 days.
Trending jobs
Warehouse worker has been the most in-demand role on Adzuna for 15 months in a row, topping the platform’s Trending Jobs list. 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. Cleaner came second in August, the third month in a row that this role has been this high.
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.