The percentage of those out of work for longer than a year has fallen by 2% to 16%, while a corresponding rise in the proportion of job-seekers who believe they’ll find work within the year suggests that the latter are feeling reinvigorated (but, hopefully, not over-confident).
That said, there are some marked regional variations in terms of confidence levels. In London, two-thirds (68%) of job-seekers appear confident in their ability to find employment within the next twelve months, whereas a sixth (17%) of all job-seekers in the north of England remain unsure of their ability to find work over the same period.
It’s suggested that the fall in the number of the long-term unemployed can be attributed at least in part to the relative “flexibility” of today’s job-seekers. 70% of those surveyed said they were prepared to take a job that they’re over-qualified for, while 63% were willing to take on part-time work and 43% said they’d accept a pay-cut. This indicates an evident readiness to compromise in the context of a “stagnant” labour market.
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The research also suggests that, in addition to becoming more flexible in terms of their employment ambitions, job-seekers are updating their approach to the market. A majority (52%) now search for jobs using their mobile phone (20% more than last year), with 72% of tablet-users using their devices to apply for work, suggesting that more people are now looking for jobs on the go. (totaljobs.com’s own mobile website has seen a dramatic increase in users, receiving almost 1.7 million visits from mobiles in June 2012 – a 134% rise year-on-year.)
“Despite the fact the UK is in a double-dip recession, many job-seekers are starting to see some glimmers of hope amongst the gloom of the ongoing economic crisis,” says totaljobs’ website director John Salt. “The recruitment market is feeling rejuvenated, with UK plc and job-seekers finally waking up to the need to be flexible, and businesses are now willing to accommodate part-time work to retain good staff or cut costs.
“At the same time, we are witnessing a change in how people look for work with the rise of the ‘techno-job-seekers’, who are increasingly integrating job-seeking into their daily routine, with half of job-seekers using their mobile phones to search for work and a third of these doing so several times a day. This provides a marker as to how job-seeking is changing in today’s market as well as how those who are unemployed need to innovate to stay ahead.”
