The Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC) and Lightcast’s latest Labour Market Tracker suggests that despite greater candidate availability and slow growth, businesses are still finding hiring challenging due to tight labour supply. With over 2.2 million active job adverts addressing workforce issues should remain a key priority.
“New job adverts are coming to the market at a steady rate, and activity levels overall remain high,” comments Neil Carberry, chief executive of the REC. “The rise of over 50 per cent in terms of active adverts since this time last year reflects the fact that firms are still struggling to fill roles. Employers should be working to integrate their people and commercial plans, re-designing roles and making sure their offer is competitive. This is where partnerships with good recruiters make a difference.
“For governments, this data shows that the decline in economic inactivity will not be enough in its own to fill the gaps businesses face as they try to drive growth,” he added. “An effective industrial strategy, uniting thinking about competitiveness, investment and employment is overdue. The people strand of any strategy must encompass skills, but also key issues of labour supply like childcare, transport, immigration and welfare-to-work support.”
The number of active postings in the week of 3-9 July 2023 was 2,248,918, a 1.2 per cent decrease compared to the previous week (26 June-2 July 2023) – but 53.3 per cent higher than the year before (4-10 July 2022). Some of this is a response to shortages, as firms leave adverts open for longer than normal.
It would require around double the population of Birmingham to fill all these posts.
There were 193,300 new job postings in the week of 3-9 July 2023 – 0.4 per cent lower compared to the week before (26 June-2 July 2023). New job postings were reduced from the previous week but 8.6 per cent higher than the year before (4-10 July 2022). New job postings have remained stable above 140,000 since January 2022. The stable, though high, trend in new jobs postings suggests the primary driver of high active advert numbers is filling jobs taking longer.
In a separate special data report the REC has examined summer demand for work. The at a shows there was an increase in demand for hospitality roles this year (April-June 2023), compared to April-June 2022 for 10 out of 13 occupations. Among those jobs with the greatest percentage growth in demand were bar staff, waiters, bakers and cooks. Only London and Wales recorded a reduction in demand for the hospitality roles in the period we measured. There was also a surge in demand for food, drink and tobacco process operatives, who perform a role in the food supply chain.
Elsewhere there was a growth in vacancies for construction this summer in every region of the UK (April-June 2023 compared to April-June 2022), while demand for agricultural and gardening work this summer was also up on summer 2022 in all regions apart from Northern Ireland.
“It is so frustrating for hospitality firms that they can’t take full advantage of the anticipated strong demand this summer because of the failure to overcome labour shortages,” noted Carberry. “Wages have risen fast in this sector and firms have invested much more in hospitality career development, but even this isn’t enabling firms to move fast enough. In the short-term, this is forcing venues to reduce opening hours, service offers or trading days despite plentiful demand. It leaves businesses getting on their feet after the pandemic unable to maximise their sales to help offset the impacts of inflation.
“Government must act to support super summers for businesses,” he added. “It can do this by, for example, updating and adding more roles onto the Shortage Occupation List and doing it quicker. Reforming the flawed apprenticeship levy and more effective polices on flexible working and encouraging economically inactive people back to work will also help.”
