The week beginning the 14th of September saw the largest number of job postings since the start of March.
This is according to the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC)’s Jobs Recovery Tracker which shows almost 129,000 new job adverts being posted between 14-20 September. This is 3 per cent more job postings compared to the previous week in September.
The reopening of schools has led to a notable increase in education-related roles such as school secretaries, lunchtime supervisors and crossing patrols.
Neil Carberry, chief executive of the REC, said:
Since lockdown restrictions were lifted at the beginning of June, we have seen the number of job adverts increasing steadily as the economy began its recovery. In recent weeks, this recovery has accelerated in the areas you would expect – education and childminding as people return to school and work, construction and logistics, and also healthcare occupations not directly related to the pandemic.
With cases on the rise again, and changes to work from home advice, we may see further changes in demand in the months to come. Importantly, Tuesday’s announcements did not close down significant parts of our economy, so we can hope that the trend of improvement we have seen over the summer persists. Government must think very carefully about any further restrictions they put into place. Public health must be a priority, but we should not underestimate the long-term effects that recession and unemployment have. Targeted wage support for key sectors, allied to an across-the-board reduction in the jobs tax – employers’ National Insurance – will help to keep more people employed. Further measures may be needed if local lockdowns become more widespread.
Matthew Mee, director, workforce intelligence at labour market analysis firm, Emsi said:
Overall it’s been another encouraging couple of weeks since our last data release, with recruitment marketing activity steadily on the rise. Obviously, with this week’s tightening of lockdown restrictions, we’ll have to see how this impacts confidence and activity in different sectors and regions. We’ll be watching this closely – particularly in vulnerable industries like retail, hospitality and accommodation, where we’d started to see early indications of a recovery.
The Jobs Recovery Tracker is produced by the REC in partnership with Emsi, using their job postings analytics data which is harvested from tens of thousands of job boards.
Darius is the editor of HRreview. He has previously worked as a finance reporter for the Daily Express. He studied his journalism masters at Press Association Training and graduated from the University of York with a degree in History.