UK company’s job postings have been slowly increasing over the past four weeks with Scotland and Wales leading the recovery.
The Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC)’s latest Jobs Recovery Tracker found that there were almost 963,000 job postings between 1-7 June, an increase from 950,000 in the week starting 11th May. With Scotland and Wales leading the recovery out of UK countries, with increases of 3.6 per cent and 2.3 per cent respectively between the 25/05/20 and the 07/06/20.
The Welsh county borough of Bridgend & Neath Port Talbot saw an 18.7 per cent increase, whereas the Scottish councils of Dumfries & Galloway witnessed an increase of 15.1 per cent and East Lothian & Midlothian 13.3 per cent. On the other hand, it was Northern Irish and English borough councils that saw the biggest decreases with Ards & North Down at -9.9 per cent, Breckland & South Norfolk at -8.2 per cent and West Kent at -7.0 per cent.
However, the number of new job adverts in the first week of June was 112,000, this is a 64 per cent rise compared to the last week of May.
Neil Carberry, chief executive of the REC, said:
We have been hearing from recruiters and business leaders all over the UK that the jobs market has been slowly improving over the past few weeks, and it’s good to see that backed up by this data. Scotland and Wales leading the way may reflect a more cautious approach from the devolved governments to closing construction and industrial sites at the height of the pandemic – with growth this week driven by sites reopening.
As lockdown measures continue to be eased and the economy gradually opens up, matching jobseekers with opportunities quickly will be more important than ever – especially given the anticipated spike in unemployment. Recruiters across the UK are ready to help, working with all UK governments to support action to tackle the scourge of unemployment.
Matthew Mee, director, workforce intelligence at labour market analytics firm Emsi said:
It’s encouraging to see there are certain regions across the UK that are now beginning to increase their recruitment marketing activity. Whilst this certainly isn’t a uniform or consistent trend as yet – we can see the recruitment sector itself is beginning to re-activate these efforts.
There are also a number of other sectors where there are signs that recovery is igniting, with companies in transportation, construction, pharmaceuticals, engineering, technology and indeed some niche retailers who now appear to be actively recruiting.
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 25th May and 7th June 2020, with comparisons drawn week-on-week.
Darius is the editor of HRreview. He has previously worked as a finance reporter for the Daily Express. He studied his journalism masters at Press Association Training and graduated from the University of York with a degree in History.
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