Despite a month spent in national lockdown job postings drop just -15.8% year-on-year
According to the latest job market data from the UK’s leading independent job board, CV-Library, the number of job postings in November has dropped by -15.8% year-on-year and -1.1% from last month; modest figures considering the UK spent most of November in a second national lockdown.
The job board analysed data from its site throughout November and compared the findings with data from the same month in 2019 and October 2020. As expected, job postings fluctuated wildly by sector with catering down -32.3% month-on-month and -71.1% year-on year, retail falling –28.2% month-on-month and –59.4% year-on year and distribution rocketing up +34.3% month-on-month and +40.5% year-on-year.
The cities that saw the largest fall in job postings year-on-year and felt the toughest impact of the lockdown, include:
- Aberdeen (-50.1%)
- Southampton (-28.2%)
- London (-27.4%)
- Edinburgh (-26.3%)
- Leeds (-26.3%)
- Manchester (-20.8%)
- Glasgow (-20.7%)
- Brighton (-19.6%)
- Portsmouth (-18.0%)
- Nottingham (-6.0%)
Lee Biggins, founder and CEO of CV-Library comments: “For any other month, these numbers would be hugely disappointing but, with the nation in lockdown since the 5th November, this data is quite encouraging. It highlights a resilience and steadiness not seen in the previous lockdown where overall numbers fell much more dramatically and last year the number of job postings fell by a higher percentage, -12.3%, between October and November 2019.
In a week where a number of retail giants folded and as we enter a much tighter set of tiered restrictions, this resilience will be severely tested and it remains to be seen if the UK Job Market can weather the next few months as well at is has in November.”
Alongside this, the findings show that job applications have also dropped by -14.4% month-on-month and -4.4% year-on-year. What’s more, while the ratio of applications per vacancy has dropped by -13.5% in October, it still remains +13.5% higher than during the same period last year.
Biggins continues: “As we emerge from the lockdown in this most unpredictable year, December, a traditionally slower month for the job market, we expect to see businesses still hiring and encourage candidates to keep up their searches. There is still time to secure a new position before 2020 ends.”
