Number of job vacancies in the UK 2001-2025

In the three months to February 2025, there were approximately 816,000 job vacancies in the UK, compared with 914,000 during the same period a year earlier. The number of job vacancies in the United Kingdom reached a record high of 1.3 million in the three months to May 2022, with the number of vacancies steadily falling since then. During the provided time period, the number of job vacancies fell to its lowest levels in the months leading to June 2020, at just 328,000, at the height of COVID-19 restrictions. 

Tight labor market beginning to loosen

After weathering the economic storm of COVID-19, the UK labor market has been reasonably healthy since 2021. The unemployment rate, which reached 5.1 percent in late 2020, declined in the following months, to a post-pandemic low of 3.5 percent by August 2022. Since that point, however, the unemployment rate has crept up, and was 4.4 percent in November 2024. Resignations have also started to decline, after reaching a peak of 442,000 in the second quarter of 2022, there were just 181,000 in the third quarter of 2024. 

Which industries are experiencing staff shortages?

The percentage of businesses reporting a staff shortage in the UK reached 15.7 percent in September 2022, before falling to just 9.7 percent by October 2023, another indication of a loosening labor market. According to data from that month, approximately 1 in 4 UK businesses in the accommodation and food services had a shortage of staff, the highest of any sector, followed by human health and social work at 18.4 percent, and manufacturing at 17.6 percent. Many of the recent struggles of Britain's National Health Service are directly related to staff shortages, with the public seeing a shortage of doctors and nurses, and overworked staff as some of the main problems facing the NHS.