UK job vacancies tumble across the board
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpdjjp681p7o
Posted by peakedtooearly
UK job vacancies tumble across the board
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpdjjp681p7o
Posted by peakedtooearly
33 Comments
> It said there was evidence that some firms may not be recruiting new workers or replacing people who have left.
I guess in isolation this would be fine if the economy was growing and people were starting new companies. Even if average number of employees decreased per company, an increase in startups (across all industries, like green energy, education, etc) would balance it out. But we have complete stagnation and lack of entrepreneurism.
Maybe this means the government will invest in more start up businesses to increase employ…. Haha, just kidding. More taxes for the middle!!!
I assume interest rates have to go down now, and then we get more inflation.
It’s a lack of confidence – doesn’t look like Labour will actually be able to deliver their manifesto so businesses are playing wait and see. So we’ll get a competely manufactured recession.
As someone who has recently returned from overseas and is desperately looking for a job; whatever the official statistics say, this is the quietest I’ve ever known the job market to be (excluding the lockdowns).
I’m genuinely worried I won’t be able to find something this time.
Almost everyone I know is unbelievably busy at the moment and constantly feels like they are short staffed.
I’m not sure when these efficiency gains we’ve been promised from AI are coming but I haven’t seen much evidence yet.
Sad to hear about the labour market though. I’m sure it’s unrelated.
Sluggish growth, persistent sticky inflation, rising unemployment, low business confidence, weak consumer spending, slowing wage growth and rising job cuts. Stagflation on the horizon?
Go for growth by punishing employers. Led by donkeys, red or blue are just different cheeks of the same backside.
Who would have thought making it more expensive to employ people would reduce the amount of people employed
AI overviews in Google are stealing about 30% of informational traffic to websites. For years companies have been showcasing their expertise with content, and that content convinced people to give them a chance. But that isn’t happening anymore, meaning revenue for a massive variety of companies has dropped for seemingly no reason.
It’s also becoming increasingly clear that a growing share of job postings aren’t for real jobs at all. For some companies, it’s highly profitable to collect free data from applicants, CVs, work histories, and personal details, which can then be sorted, ranked, and even sold to recruiters or used later if a genuine vacancy arises.
Posting fake jobs also gives firms a ready-made database to verify future CVs for authenticity, while projecting an image of growth to outsiders. From a purely commercial perspective, there’s little downside for a private company unfortunately, the only people who lose out are the jobseekers whose time and data are being exploited.
This is a direct consequence of the chancellor increasing NICs. Companies are holding back on hiring additional staff because to do so could cost them any rates relief they had, and put an even bigger dent in their finances than before. It is far less worth it than before to hire additional staff unless you’re absolutely desperate and are certain that the additional work capacity will pay for the additional taxation burdens.
Meanwhile the job centre and restart still requires people to apply for 30+ jobs a week.
I have been trying to tell them both for months that job vacancies are falling fast and to ask them if theres any courses or whatever that I can do to retrain so I can get out of this cycle and they look at me like im insane and insist everything is ok lol
We’ve just stopped recruiting anyone and are more aggressively pushing outsourcing, far too expensive to employ in the UK. Shame.
We’re in an economic downturn and have been for quite some time…. Things are only going to get worse for this year and next year. I haven’t seent he job market this bad since 2008 and that makes for some pretty grim reading if you ask me ! Wages are absolutely shocking, yet house prices are at all time highs, we have less services than we did back in 2008 and inflation is hammering food prices.
We are already in a recession imo and it will be official by Q4 of this year. If you have any debt that you can clear now would be a good time to do so.
Well, yeah. The government just dumped a bunch of taxes onto companies, making it more expensive to hire people.
We can all see what’s happening, here. Nothing in the budget had the likelihood of improving anything and the 20bn black hole has now turned into a 50bn black hole.
Everything the doomsayers predicted, wrt the budget, have come to fruition. This feels intentional tbh.
Tell me about it.
I’m going to lose my job within the next 2 years due to the company going under. I have chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia so my job choices are very limited. I’ve never seen the job market so bad. I’m terrified.
Since Labour have come to power:
Overall, employment is up, employment rate is up, economic inactivity is down and wages continue to grow faster than inflation.
There are 34,214,000 people employed in the UK, which is 238,000 (April to June 2025) higher than the previous quarter and 725,000 higher than the previous year – ONS August 2025 (Release date: 12 August 2025)
Unemployment is up slightly (59,000 higher than the previous quarter and 206,000 higher compared to a year ago) however, the overall employment rate is 75.3% which is 0.3% higher than the previous quarter and 0.7% higher than the previous year – ONS August 2025 (Release date: 12 August 2025)
There are 9,073,000 people economically inactive in the UK, which is 156,000 lower than the previous quarter and 404,000 lower than the previous year – ONS August 2025 (Release date: 12 August 2025)
Economic inactivity rate is 21% which is 0.4% lower than the previous quarter and 1.1% lower than the previous year – ONS August 2025 (Release date: 12 August 2025)
Annual wage growth in real terms, adjusted for inflation using the Consumer Prices Index excluding owner occupiers’ housing costs (CPI) to adjust for inflation, annual growth in real terms was 1.5% for regular pay and 1.1% for total pay – ONS August 2025 (Release date: 12 August 2025)
Annual average regular earnings growth was 5.7% for the public sector and 4.8% for the private sector – ONS August 2025 (Release date: 12 August 2025)
Called outsourcing
In my industry only companies surviving are hiring overseas and not in the uk
Which is wild when all clients are based in Britain and mainly public sector contracts
Our IT department is already laying off some people as it has managed to get AI to do the roles
I’ve noticed a massive change in software dev recruitment in the last year.
It used to be all I had to do was upload a fresh copy of my CV on a few job sites and I’d be absolutely inundated with calls and emails from recruiters. Now there’s absolutely nothing, and the occasional application I send is ignored.
Fortunately I’m just shopping around a bit while in a secure job, but it’s looking bloody tough out there at the moment
Yep. I’m busy as hell. The number of management/mid management far exceeds the number of working staff actually doing the job. 70% of the jobs that were here have moved to Poland over the last 5 years and we haven’t recruited anyone for 3 years. Even though there’s more work coming than we can deal with we are still not expanding the team. Overheads are rising but it’s not passed to the employees.
For my actual job, I haven’t been able to do it correctly for years. The offshored work is not good. Language barrier maybe but the quality is not what it was. It all amounts to critical safety concerns. But the higher ups don’t care as long as it’s on time and to budget. Crazy world.
We’re in the middle of a redundancy consultation ourselves. 50+ jobs to be axed in a 450 staffed business
I work in the city in IT infrastructure, if anyone leaves we:
1) look backfill with AI
And/or
2) look to outsource overseas.
We’ll probably never hire anyone in the UK again which is a real shame.
I’m hanging on for dear life in my current role because I’m convinced it’s not going to ever get better than this in terms of work in the UK.
I’ve also started networking like mad because when they finally replace me I’m fairly sure the only way I’ll be able to get a another job is via nepotism, I guess that’s really the only benefit of being in London, more networking opportunities.
Simple answer. Businesses are not backfilling headcount nor hiring in new headcount in anticipation of what AI can do for them.
Plenty of job losses aswel
Nothing on news either
Country is doomed
There’s a lack of well paying jobs period, I feel sorry for our young, no hope of getting on the housing ladder, no hope of council housing as other groups get priority, the country is a real mess. I have still yet to understand why we need to import people with families to drive Ubers, how are they affording rent?
Great for all of those disabled people who will be looking for work soon 🙂
Its been ongoing since October 2024, the UK job market is horrific, hiring freezes, fake jobs, qualified people continuously passed on for jobs they can do.
I wonder if Brexit might have anything to do with this…
And I’m being made redundant at the end of the week 🙃
That’s what the idiotic NIC rises have done, I’m actually surprised that it still hasn’t been reversed yet.
If a company was spending x amount on staff before, they’ll be reluctant to start spending more, ergo less staff will be employed.
That’s clearly fake news. Labour said they had a plan for growth, everything they were and are doing will bring huge growth….and they made all these huge important amazing trade deals. It’s not like Reeves disaster budget, Labours back bench revolt, every increasing borrowing and the upcoming tax hikes could do anything other than bring growth 🙄 😒