Key Points:
- As of 24 January, UK job postings were 14% below their pre-pandemic baseline, in contrast to peer economies, which are in positive territory.
- Opportunities vary by sector. Many professional categories remain weak, while demand for some in-person occupations is still relatively high.
- Strong wage growth persists across a range of occupational categories, led by security & public safety, retail and customer service.
Our Labour Market Updates examine important trends using Indeed and other labour market data. Our recently introduced European Labour Market Overview chartbook provides a more comprehensive view of the European labour market. Other data, including the Indeed Wage Tracker, are regularly updated and can be accessed on our data portal.
Gloom around the state of the UK labour market is pervasive at the start of 2025. But while things are bad, driven in part by ongoing policy changes, they haven’t gotten too much worse over the past few weeks. After sliding virtually uninterrupted over the past two-plus years, the level of job postings appears to have stabilised lately, though at admittedly low levels that don’t match peer economies. Meanwhile, strong wage growth persists in spite of the fragile state of hiring demand. Stubbornly high wage growth remains one of the key factors being watched by policymakers at the Bank of England as they weigh the appropriate level of interest rates needed to balance inflation and recession risks.
UK job postings continue to languish
UK job postings remain subdued. As of 24 January, postings were 14% below their 1 February 2020, pre-pandemic baseline. That’s in contrast to other developed economies where postings are above the baseline, in several cases comfortably so. Among advanced economies tracked by Indeed, only France saw a bigger decline in postings over the past year (-23% versus -20% for the UK), and the total level of postings in France remains almost 30% above pre-pandemic levels. Subdued hiring demand reflects weak business sentiment ahead of the Budget changes coming into effect in April, especially an increase in National Insurance Contributions (NICs) which will raise payroll costs for many employers.
However, the level of postings hasn’t crashed since the Budget announcement on 30 October. Rather, they have remained stable, dipping only marginally since Budget day, when postings were 13% below baseline. That’s true even for sectors including hospitality and retail, which are expected to be hit hardest by the policy changes. Food service and retail postings have actually risen slightly over the period.
Job postings in high work-from-home sectors continue to lag in-person categories
Job postings declined across almost all occupational categories in 2024, with the exception of legal. However, some remain comfortably above their pre-pandemic baseline, led by education & instruction (+59% over 1 Feb 2020 levels), real estate (+56%) and social science (+52%). By contrast, job postings are well below the baseline in a handful of tech categories, nursing and beauty & wellness.
The job postings trend is weakest — collectively, some 21% below pre-pandemic levels — for those occupations which tend to offer the most remote-work opportunities, including tech, finance, and marketing. Low-remote occupations, including retail, driving and construction, are 14% below the baseline. Medium-remote occupations, including jobs in the customer service, administrative assistance and real estate sectors, are just 2% below the baseline.
Wage growth remains sticky, despite the cooling jobs market
The latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures showed familiar trends, marked by further cooling in the labour market alongside stubbornly strong wage growth in late-2024. The labour market has loosened as vacancies have normalised from post-pandemic peaks and unemployment has risen modestly. Even so, the market overall remains somewhat tight at 1.9 unemployed people per vacancy, a level similar to the prevailing rate just before the pandemic (up from lows of around 1 back in 2022). However, data quality issues around the ONS’ Labour Force Survey continue to muddy the waters around underlying dynamics, with estimates of employment, unemployment and inactivity all subject to significant uncertainty due to low response rates.
The Indeed Wage Tracker also shows strong pay pressures. Posted wage growth eased slightly in December but was still running at a punchy 6.1% year-on-year, nearly double the rates seen in the US and euro area. Strong rates of wage growth continued to be seen in a range of occupations in December, led by security & public safety at 8.6% year-on-year, followed by retail (8.4%) and customer service (8.0%).
Strong wage growth is good for workers but continues to give the Bank of England a headache, as it remains well above levels consistent with the Bank’s 2% inflation target. At 4.75%, the UK policy rate is now the highest among developed economies. The Bank is treading a fine line between balancing upside inflation risks and the downside risks of any further economic weakening and the prospect of a recession.
Conclusion
It may be thin gruel, but the recent stability in job postings at least suggests the UK labour market’s already weak prospects haven’t deteriorated any further in early 2025. With businesses bracing for the April double whammy of the National Insurance hike and an uplift in the minimum wage, few employers are likely to be overtly bullish on hiring at the moment. The extent to which policymakers in government (through initiatives to kick-start growth) and at the Bank of England (through lower interest rates) are able to ride to the UK economy’s rescue this year will do much to shape how the job market fares this year and beyond.
Hiring Lab Data
Job postings data is available on our Data Portal. We also host the underlying job-postings chart data on Github as downloadable CSV files. Typically, it will be updated with the latest data one day after this blog post is published.
Methodology
Data on seasonally adjusted Indeed job postings are an index of the number of seasonally adjusted job postings on a given day, using a seven-day trailing average. Feb. 1, 2020, is our pre-pandemic baseline, so the index is set to 100 on that day. We seasonally adjust each series based on historical patterns in 2017, 2018, and 2019. We adopted this methodology in January 2021.
To calculate the average rate of wage growth, we follow an approach similar to the Atlanta Fed US Wage Growth Tracker, but we track jobs, not individuals. We begin by calculating the median posted wage for each country, month, job title, region and salary type (hourly, monthly or annual). Within each country, we then calculate year-on-year wage growth for each job title-region-salary type combination, generating a monthly distribution. Our monthly measure of wage growth for the country is the median of that distribution.
The number of job postings on Indeed.com, whether related to paid or unpaid job solicitations, is not indicative of potential revenue or earnings of Indeed, which comprises a significant percentage of the HR Technology segment of its parent company, Recruit Holdings Co., Ltd. Job posting numbers are provided for information purposes only and should not be viewed as an indicator of performance of Indeed or Recruit. Please refer to the Recruit Holdings investor relations website and regulatory filings in Japan for more detailed information on revenue generation by Recruit’s HR Technology segment.