Tag: Job listing

UK region in every sector outstrips job postings for 2020

The latest reports from Reed.co.uk, have stated that over 3.3 million jobs were added onto its website in 2021 – that’s a whopping 1.5 million more than 2020 which equates to a year-on-year rise of 97%!

Reed.co.uk also reported a 25% increase in new jobs posted last year compared with 2019, when 2.7 million jobs were recorded before the start of the pandemic.

September saw the most amounts of job postings with 357,489 created which was an increase of 150% compared to 2020 and 60% compared to 2019.

Similarly in December which is month where job postings usually fall in the lead up to the holidays and new year recorded nearly  350,000 new live vacancies. December was the second most active month of 2021 and a 151% and 132% increase on 2020 and 2019’s figures respectively.

Job postings in every sector on Reed.co.uk were up year-on-year compared to 2020, with Customer Service (510%) and Transport & Logistics (337%) seeing the highest percentage increases, followed by Banking (305%), Strategy & Consultancy (255%), Hospitality & Catering (176%), Retail (170%) and Manufacturing (136%).

In terms of the number of new jobs created, Transport & Logistics was the most active sector in 2021 with 376,000 jobs posted, followed by Customer Service (338,954), IT & Telecoms (264,184), Education (256,301) and Health & Medicine (168,558).

Further evidence of a jobs boom was reported by Reed.co.uk through its regional analysis of job vacancies on the site. Every region across the UK saw job vacancies for last year outstrip 2020 and nearly all saw more jobs added than before the pandemic. South East England and London were the most active regions for job postings with both seeing over half a million new vacancies added last year, a 77% and 108% increase year-on-year, respectively.

Recent analysis of Reed.co.uk’s jobs data also suggests that the ongoing jobs boom will continue into 2022, with over 32,000 jobs live on the site in 24-hours on the first Tuesday of the new year – a new record.

James Reed, chairman of Reed Recruitment commented: “As we move into 2022, the momentum which has built up in the jobs market is showing no signs of slowing down either. It is now the best time in fifty years to look for a new job. In this newly established sellers’ market, jobseekers hold all the cards and should feel empowered to find new opportunities whether to explore different industries, improve work-life balance, increase wages or boost career prospects. I urge anyone thinking of switching career to explore the opportunities available to them.”

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Businesses rushed to hire more staff as they prepared for the easing of lockdown measures that came into play this week.

Companies across the UK posted 181,000 new job adverts in the first week of May, following a post-pandemic record of 211,000 new job listings in the final week of April.

According to the REC’s Jobs Recovery Tracker, this meant there were a total of 1.53 million active job postings in the UK in the first week of this month.

Neil Carberry, Chief Executive of the REC, said: “The jobs data continues to give us good news for the recovery. Since governments across the UK announced plans for easing lockdowns, we’ve seen a robust and rising rate of new job ads being posted.

“As restrictions ease, those numbers have continued to rise. Business leaders are feeling more confident now than at any point during the past year.”

Unsurprisingly, job listings were dominated by sectors where activity has been heavily curtailed throughout the pandemic.

Teachers and other education professionals were the profession with the highest weekly increase in demand during the first week of May, with listings up 22.1%.

Hospitality boom

There was also strong growth in jobs for hospitality and leisure workers, with bar staff ads up 17.5%, waiting staff demand up 9.9% and hotel and accommodation manager listings rising by 10.3%.

The REC data was backed up by research by job search engine Adzuna, which said that hospitality and catering jobs had risen by 188% in the seven weeks to the first week of May.

It said the sector was seeing the fastest recovery by some distance, with logistics and warehouse, retail, legal and manufacturing roles making up the rest of the top five sectors for growth in job listings.

Andrew Hunter, Co-founder of Adzuna, said the rapid hiring in recent weeks had led to “hot competition” for staff, particularly as many hospitality and retail workers had left the industry over the past year.

He added: “There are also far fewer foreign workers seeking employment in the UK, with overseas interest in UK jobs more than halving from before the pandemic, hitting these industries hard. UK employers can no longer rely on overseas workers to plug employment gaps.”

The shortage of candidates in some of the sectors currently seeking staff was also noted by Matthew Mee, Director of Workforce Intelligence at Emsi, which works with the REC to produce the Jobs Recovery Tracker.

“With the workforce shrinking significantly over the last 12 months (a combination of Covid, furlough and Brexit), we’re hearing strong anecdotes from our recruitment clients of an increasingly tight labour market in a number of sectors – particularly those that aren’t currently listed on the Skilled Worker Occupation Shortage list.”

Recruiters ‘sought after’ partners

While this supply/demand imbalance may be bad news for companies in some sectors, it appears to be good news for the recruitment sector as firms look for help sourcing staff.

The latest Recruitment Trends Snapshot report from the Association of Professional Staffing Companies (APSCo) reported “massive spikes” in year-on-year vacancies and placements in the professional recruitment sector.

It found that while permanent vacancies were down slightly in April when compared with the previous month, they were up 90% year on year, while contract roles rose by 83%. Permanent placements were up 82% on the same basis, while contract roles rose by 68%.

Ann Swain, Chief Executive of APSCo, said: “This data points very clearly to the ongoing value of the recruitment sector to the economy as organisations look for help to find the right skill sets.

“While the last year has been very tough on business and there has undoubtedly been redundancies, the annual increases in vacancies show that while there may be more candidates on the market, professional sectors still have niche skill shortages, and our profession will continue to be a sought after expert partner to help source those skills.”

Photo courtesy of Canva.com

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