The UK jobs market experienced its biggest monthly fall in vacancies in more than three years in December, as business confidence in the UK continues to contract. HR and recruitment vacancies have fallen the most.
Total advertised job vacancies dropped -6.95% in December to 929,138, the second month in a row that total vacancies are lower than 1 million, according to the UK Job Market Report by job search engine Adzuna.
Early data also anticipates that January could be equally tough, with vacancies expected to decrease again, by between -6% and -8%. The last time job vacancies fell this dramatically was in June 2020 when monthly vacancies dropped -18.14% as businesses struggled to get to grips with the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The fall in vacancies also means competition for jobs is now the highest it’s been since September 2021, at 1.68 jobseekers per vacancy. This is compared with May and June when it was at its 2023 lowest, at 1.45.
Salaries
Average advertised salaries rose +0.96% monthly to £37,577, and up +2.28% on an annual basis, but this is not necessarily good news for candidates because, according to Adzuna, this may point to a lack of entry-level or junior positions available, with companies hiring only for more senior roles.
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Research showed that an increasing number of job adverts are neglecting to include salary data (50.2%), making it hard for potential candidates to understand the seniority of a role.
Teaching was the only sector to experience a rise in monthly job vacancies in December, up +4.39% compared with November and an increase of +38.32% compared to 2022’s figures. Teaching was also the sector with the shortest time to fill for roles, at 30.9 days on average, up from 37.8 the previous month, whilst the average for all sectors was 35.6 days.
Every other sector saw a monthly fall in advertised job vacancies throughout December, with the biggest falls in retail (-17.94%), manufacturing (-17.05%), hospitality and catering (-14.13%) and trade and construction (-13.56%). The availability of graduate roles has also continued to suffer with live job advertisements down -8.4% compared with November. The sector also takes the longest to fill roles, on average 47.2 days, which points to high competition in the sector for a smaller number of available opportunities.
HR vacancies in freefall
When compared with last year’s figures, HR and recruitment vacancies have fallen the most, down -43.38% to 10,127 roles, followed by IT jobs which are down -35.34% to 90,507.
The smallest fall was in engineering, which has seen vacancies drop only -3.48% compared with the same time last year. Despite the fall in advertised vacancies, it’s still one of the biggest hiring sectors on the Adzuna platform with 83,339 available jobs.
The biggest increases in advertised salaries were in creative and design jobs, up +2.15% to £39,112 and retail jobs, up +2.19% to £28,097.
IT and maintenance were the only two sectors to see average advertised salaries fall -1% and -1.65% respectively. IT advertised salaries were also down -8.66% on an annual basis – which was actually good news because this was one of the smallest decreases in salaries the sector has experienced in the past year.
Social work jobs saw the steepest increase in advertised salaries compared with the same time last year, up +11.54% to £34,446.
Cambridge has remained on top as the best city to find a job, with low competition rates: there are 0.3 jobseekers for 7,383 vacancies, a status it has maintained throughout 2023. This is followed by Oxford (0.63) and Reading (0.73).
The absence of bounce back after Christmas was a worrying feature of the figures for Tony Wilson, director at the independent HR consultancy the Institute for Employment Studies. He said: “Hiring is clearly slowing down, but worryingly this data also suggests that there’s been little if any rebound in activity in the new year.
“Ordinarily, we would expect quite a strong bounce back in recruitment after Christmas, but the fact that this hasn’t happened this year suggests that a lot of firms are holding back given wider uncertainty in the economy or are themselves feeling the pinch as people rein in their spending. Either way, this doesn’t suggest a great start to the year in the labour market.”
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