Jobs Recovery Tracker: Weekly job adverts top one million as lockdown eases

• Total number of job postings in the UK grows to 1.05 million
• Rise was most pronounced in north-west England, with 125,000 job postings in early July
• Growth in demand for IT professionals, graphic designers and LGV drivers
• Demand falls for teachers, dentists and fitness instructors

The number of job postings across the UK continued to rise as lockdown measures were eased in early July, according to the latest figures from the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC).

The total number of active job adverts was 1.05 million in the week of 6-12 July, up from 990,000 in the final week of June. There were also 106,000 new job adverts posted in the week of 6-12 July, 14,000 more than the week of 22-28 June.

While this growth was seen across the whole country, it was most pronounced in the north-west of England. Between 22-28 June and 6-12 July, the number of active job postings in the region increased by over 17,000 to 125,000. In particular, Mid Lancashire has continued to see a surge in job adverts, with a rise of 37.4% in early July. This includes a notable increase in postings for web designers and developers, programmers and software developers – reflecting the strong growth in digital commerce we have seen during the lockdown.

This increase in job adverts for IT professionals was seen across the UK. Postings for web designers and developers increased by 15.5%, and there was a rise of 6.6% for programmers and software developers. Other job roles which saw growth in job postings included graphic designers (+11.3%), sales administrators (+9.9%), LGV drivers (+9.7%) and carpenters and joiners (+8.5%). There was also a 9.4% increase in demand for clothing designers, potentially in response to non-essential shops reopening and the increase in online shopping during lockdown.

Meanwhile, demand for both primary and secondary school teachers continued to decrease (by 4.3% and 4.6% respectively), as well as dentists (-7.1%) and fitness instructors (-8.8%).

Neil Carberry, Chief Executive of the REC, said:

“Business confidence has slowly been rising as lockdown measures have eased – though the recovery has a long way to go. This is reflected in these job postings figures. While many businesses are facing tough decisions on staffing this week, there are other firms where hiring is still happening, and their numbers are growing. It is encouraging that we are seeing indications of growth for roles like IT professionals and designers, which will be critical for many firms as they adapt to meet the challenges of a changed market.

“However, we are not out of the woods. The economy will not return to normal levels for some time. Firms are looking to government for further guidance on how they can begin to open up more fully, including returning to offices – as long as it’s safe to do so. This would deliver a further boost in confidence and get Britain’s world-leading services industries going.”

Matthew Mee, Director, Workforce Intelligence at Emsi said:

“As Neil highlighted, it’s positive to see a continued rise in job posting activity over the last 2 weeks in certain sectors, locations and occupations – albeit this is of course tempered with a significant rise in redundancies and claimant counts across a number of UK industries. 

“The next 2-3 months are going to be critical to understand the true impact of the furlough scheme and wider government support programs. We believe recruitment marketing activity will continue to be a useful lead indicator to predict how and where the economy is adapting to market conditions – however it’s also crucial to understand changes in the supply side of the labour market in parallel, which is why we’ve recently introduced this data into Emsi tools. 

“Recruiters will play a key role in the months ahead as we all try to keep Britain working!”

Ends

Notes to editors:  

1. The Jobs Recovery Tracker is produced by the REC in partnership with Emsi, using their Job Postings Analytics data which is harvested from tens of thousands of job boards. Data was harvested between 22 June and 12 July 2020. For more details, see the attached annexes which, in league table format, detail the top and bottom ten county/unitary authorities for growth in job postings and growth by occupation type.
2. ‘Active’ job postings are those which were live online during the specified time period. ‘New’ job postings are those which were added to the active stock during the specified time period.
3. The Jobs Recovery Tracker will be published every two to three weeks to compliment the REC’s bank of surveys including the Report on Jobs and JobsOutlook, which provide a picture of recruitment activity and employers’ confidence and hiring intentions.

For more information and interview enquiries, contact the REC Press Office on 020 7009 2157, 020 7009 2192 or pressoffice@rec.uk.com. Outside of regular office hours, please call 07702 568 829.

The REC is the voice of the recruitment industry, speaking up for great recruiters. We drive standards and empower recruitment businesses to build better futures for great candidates and themselves. We are champions of an industry which is fundamental to the strength of the UK economy.

Emsi’s goal is to help local, regional and national economies function more effectively through helping people make better decisions relating to the world of work. To achieve this, we employ a team of expert economists, data scientists and software programmers to build a dataset that is highly granular, extremely robust, and easy to use. Emsi was founded in Idaho in 2000 and now serves clients in the US, UK, Canada and Australia. Find out more at www.economicmodelling.co.uk.

ANNEXES

Top ten and bottom ten county/unitary authorities for growth in job postings:

Top ten and bottom ten occupations by growth in job postings:

Key indicator occupations