Monthly vacancy analysis: Vacancy trends to week-ending 11 October 2020

This monthly briefing describes changes in online vacancies over the month to 11 October.  This is the last in a series of briefings since the Covid-19 crisis began, which are available here. The work is funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and uses vacancy data collected by Adzuna (www.adzuna.co.uk), one of the largest online job search engines in the UK. The briefing sets out analysis of new vacancies, overall vacancy levels, and vacancies by region and devolved nation, job type and Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP).

This month’s analysis focuses on changes by ‘area type’ and by occupation.  It finds that the most significant improvements in vacancies have been in more rural, semi-rural and ex-industrial areas, which had on average lower levels of pre-crisis vacancies. More urban, industrial and thriving rural areas had regained over half of their losses since the crisis began; but in Central London vacancies are actually lower than they were during lockdown and by October were recovering only very slowly.

The occupational analysis focuses on June to September to understand how job growth may have been changing in the recovery.  Vacancies grew overall during this period, but this was driven by strong growth in manual and elementary jobs as well as in skilled trades.  More senior professional occupations fell significantly, from two in five to just over a quarter of advertised jobs.