Festive period ignites new high for job adverts

With Christmas just weeks away, job adverts have continued to jump throughout November as businesses rush to hire talent to cope with the busy festive period.

There were 210,000 new job ads posted in the week of 22 to 28 November, reported the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC)’s latest Jobs Recovery Tracker.

This follows three of the top five weeks for new job postings since the tracker began, with 266,000 new postings between 15 to 21 November and 274,000 in the first week of the month.

As a result of this growth, active job postings have continued to rise. In fact, last week the REC reported that there were over 3.5m job adverts live in the UK, with that number having spiked by over 500,000 since the end of October this year.

Reflecting on the data, Neil Carberry, chief executive of the REC, noted that the growth in job adverts doesn’t look like it’ll be slowing down anytime soon.

“We’ll have to wait and see how this week’s news on the Omicron variant affects the market, with hospitality, the sector most likely to bear the brunt of any slowdown in consumer confidence,” he said.

“The downturn in hospitality management roles in this data is more likely to reflect the completion of hiring for Christmas, however.”

The report found notable growth in active job adverts across a range of sectors in late November, including prison officers (+21.0%), scaffolders (+6.9%), dentists (+4.5%), vets (+4.5%) and veterinary nurses (+3.8%).

Similarly, the education and training sector also witnessed growth, including roles for school secretaries (+4.9%), career advisers (+3.5%), and special needs teachers (+3.4%).

There was, however, a decline in job positions for publicans and managers of licensed premises (-20.8%). In addition, management roles in hospitality, including restaurant and catering managers saw a decrease (-7.7%), alongside hotel and accommodation managers (-7.1%), and catering and bar managers (-6.8%).

Despite these declines, Carberry shared that the current job market is still led by candidates, meaning employers need to think about how they can attract talent due to increasing competition.

He added: “Government can help by working with business organisations on skills, immigration and unemployment policies that boost labour supply, helping businesses grow and the UK to prosper.”

How to manage employee attraction and retention is explored in the latest issue of Reward Strategy. You can read more here.