Job advertisements reach a new high amid labour shortages

A 2022 record of 1.69 million job advertisements were posted last week (6-12 June).

This was despite the number of new job postings falling to 160,000 in the week following the Jubilee bank holiday weekend, according to the Recruitment & Employment Confederation’s latest market tracker.

The number of job adverts was six percentage points more than in the previous week.

The fall in new postings was likely to be a hangover from the long Jubilee weekend – by comparison, there were over 200,000 new job postings in each of the previous two weeks.

The rising number of active postings overall likely reflects job adverts being left open for longer, with employers across the country struggling to attract candidates for their vacancies.

Neil Carberry, chief executive of the REC, said: “Our national challenge is that there are more than half a million fewer people in the labour force than before the pandemic. Government and business must work together to support those not currently working to find a way back to the labour market, reform the skills system to equip people for the future and ensure the new immigration system does meet the needs of our economy.”

Almost every sector saw an increase in active job adverts last week. The largest weekly growth in adverts was for probation officers (+33.1%). The construction sector saw significant increases in job adverts last week, such as for tool makers and tool fitters (+14.1%), carpenters and joiners (+10.8%), construction and building trades supervisors (+10.1%), and plasterers (+9.9%).

On a local level, the UK’s hiring hotspot last week was Medway, Kent, with an 18.2% rise in job adverts from the previous week. Three of the top 10 hiring hotspots last week were in the West Midlands, the most notable being Dudley (+12%), followed by Sandwell (+10.9%) and Shropshire (+9.7%).

At the other end of the scale, seven out of the bottom 10 local areas for growth in active job postings were in Wales. Of those, Anglesey (-5.4%), Bridgend and Neath Port Talbot (-1.1%), and Powys (-0.7%) saw the biggest falls.

John Gray, vice president, UK operations at Emsi Burning Glass, said: “In the short term, employers are going to have to become much more intentional in how they attract talent, including reviewing the salaries they are offering and communicating their benefits more clearly.

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He added that in the longer term, the UK needed to develop “more innovative and data-driven ways of understanding skills demand”.

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