Job postings on Indeed are a real-time measure of worker demand across the UK labour market. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we developed the Indeed Job Posting Tracker to create a timely measure of labour market conditions. Up-to-date labour market information is important for policymakers and helps frame the public debate around the labour market. 

These interactive graphs enable a comparison of job postings on Indeed for Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States. In addition, a comparison of occupational groups is also available for the UK.

How to interpret Indeed’s data?

  1. During the first wave of the pandemic, UK job postings fell 60% from their level on February 1, 2020 Indeed’s pre-pandemic baseline. The decline in job postings was broad-based, impacting most occupational categories. 
  2. Though job market conditions gradually improved from June 2020, the initial recovery was slow. Job postings only returned to their pre-pandemic level in May 2021 amid the full reopening of the economy after the third national lockdown. 
  3. Job postings growth was strong in the second half of 2021 and by February 2022, UK job postings stood 50% above their pre-pandemic baseline. 

Indeed’s data can be downloaded from our Indeed Hiring Lab Github repository for independent analysis. The Indeed Hiring Lab website also contains a range of analysis on UK labour market trends. If you have any questions, you can find our contact information here. 

Methodological Notes

All data used is the percentage change in seasonally adjusted job postings since February 1, 2020, using a 7-day moving average. February 1, 2020 represents our pre-pandemic baseline. We seasonally adjust each series based on historical patterns in 2017, 2018 and 2019. Each series, including the national trend and occupational sectors, is seasonally-adjusted separately. We adopted this new methodology in January 2021. 

This data is publicly available on Indeed’s UK website and any other countries used in the graph. This information is not a prediction of future events and includes both paid and unpaid job postings.