Jobs Data: vacancies creep back up despite lockdown

- Vacancies up 2% week on week
- IT roles continue to dominate hiring activity
- Hiring in the Capital rises slowly but still way below 2020 levels


Despite the latest ONS statistics painting a bleak picture – revealing a slowdown in vacancy recovery in the UK for Q4 2020 – availability of roles started to creep up during January. That’s according to the latest real-time statistics from the world’s largest network of job boards, Broadbean Technology



Vacancies begin to climb across the UK with IT dominating hiring landscape



Broadbean’s data revealed that there was a 2% increase in vacancies during the week ending 24th January which, while a modest rise, demonstrates that business optimism is returning the market despite the current lockdown. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the IT arena performed particularly strongly with jobs for tech professionals climbing 17% week-on-week. However year-on year, the data reveals that job roles rose 20% reflecting the enormous demand from employers for IT expertise as remoting working practices continue.



In comparison, Broadbean’s data revealed that other sectors are struggling with the current lookdown restriction. The hospitality sector, for example, where many businesses have had to shut their doors once more, saw an 81% reduction in vacancies year-on-year.



Hiring in capital slowly starts to climb



Elsewhere, the data revealed that despite hiring in the capital down 30% year-on-year, recruitment activity has started to climb in January with vacancies up 3% during the week ending 24th January. In comparison, other major cities have seen a week-on-week decline in vacancies, with Manchester and Birmingham noting a -1% and -10% decline for the week ending 24th January.



Alex Fourlis, Managing Director at Broadbean Technology commented:

“With the UK entering another national lockdown earlier this month, we certainly expected recruitment levels to be impacted with several sectors effectively shutting down once more, so to see vacancies rise – albeit at a modest rate – is encouraging news. And while it is early days in terms of establishing the exact extent to which the employment market will be impacted long term following lockdown, early indications suggest that job availability in some areas is faring well. With the vaccination programme ramping up day by day, and more business able to better facilitate remote working practices, we are cautiously optimistic about the coming weeks and months”.



Ends



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