Job applications increased by nearly a third in June, as candidates seem to be actively looking for new opportunities as certain COVID-19 lockdown restrictions have been lifted.
This is according to CV-Library research, who found that job applications in June rose by 32 per cent, as well as an increase of 106 per cent compared to this time last year.
The industries which saw the biggest rises in job applications month-on-month were sales, which rose by 83 per cent, recruitment by 66 per cent, design by 60 per cent, marketing by 57 per cent, administration by 57 per cent, accounting and finance by 50 per cent, education by 44 per cent, property by 43 per cent, charity by 41 per cent and leisure/tourism by 39 per cent.
The UK cities that saw the biggest rise were:
- Leicester (48 per cent)
- Nottingham (46 per cent)
- Brighton (44 per cent)
- Leeds (44 per cent)
- Liverpool (42 per cent)
- Cardiff (41 per cent)
- Sheffield (39 per cent)
- Southampton (39 per cent)
- Birmingham (36 per cent)
- Newcastle (34 per cent)
The most competitive cities to find a job appears to be Bristol (203 per cent more applications per vacancy), Edinburgh (166 per cent more), Brighton (150 per cent more), Southampton (148 per cent more) and Portsmouth (122 per cent more).
It does appear, however, that the average salary has decreased by 3.7 per cent in June on a month-on-month basis. With Scotland seeing a decrease of 2.8 per cent and 1.7 per cent in the South East.
Lee Biggins, founder and CEO of CV-Library, said:
The rise in applications will be welcome news to organisations that have struggled to source top talent in recent years. However, the sad reality is that hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to look for a new role because of the pandemic. Competition for these jobs is intensifying and businesses need to be sensitive of the situation and remember that employer branding is still important. Try to give constructive feedback, communicate your hiring timeline and be as honest and open as possible with candidates. As lockdown restrictions started to ease in June, we saw a number of different industries return to the workplace and this helped to instil confidence back into businesses.
However, we still have a long way to go until job numbers return to normal levels. The fact that average salaries have dropped isn’t overly surprising, particularly as many organisations have struggled with their breakeven point during the pandemic. While most professionals still say that salary is the most important factor to them when looking for a new role, we’re also seeing that more workers want flexibility and job security too. As we can see from our data, lower wages certainly aren’t putting people off applying, but businesses will need to accommodate to their changing needs.
To obtain these results, CV-Library analysed its own data from June 2020 and compared the findings with May 2020 and June 2019.
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.
