UK job market data can be used for more than just making sales. With the raw Big Data available through eBoss Jobfeed, our analysts can help you to set your goals (and , perhaps, expectations) for your placements in the month ahead.

UK Job Market Data: April 2021

Our first report of 2021 tracks the total number of jobs across all regions of the British Isles.

This set of data arrives at the end of a protracted lockdown in the UK. In the two weeks prior to this data being collected, many parts of public life have re-opened in Britain. This includes non-essential shops and services like hair salons, as well as leisure industry staples such as pubs and gyms.

It may perhaps be expected that the recruitment industry would also experience a much-needed shot in the arm, too. After all, many of the returning businesses may have furloughed staff and found the same personnel are no longer available now that it is time to re-open. Were that to be the case, then we might see a sudden burst of hiring activity within our data.

But is this narrative reflected in the raw job market data?

Regular versus Seasonal Work

Long-time readers will have noticed that this is the first report to use three data sets in its comparison. The reason? It is because our previous Jobfeed report took a snapshot of the UK job market in the run up to Christmas. And, as our subheading has already spoiler-ised, that means slightly skewed data thanks to seasonal recruiting.

While 2020 was by no means a typical festive period in the job market, there was still a high volume of seasonal roles. For this reason, the previous edition of our reporting may not offer the most balance side-by-side comparison. So we have added the figures from September 2020 for perhaps a more balanced view as recruitment emerges from lockdown.

And the impact of seasonal hiring apparently does play out in the figures. We see 20,000 fewer jobs created in the most recent 30-day period of study. We see 10,000 fewer roles in the weekly comparison with November 2020. But, compared to September of last year, we do start to see some job growth.

the 30-day overview still shows a decline in job creation. But the seven-day view finds evidence of improvement.

Taking the smallest data pool, there has been a sudden burst in hiring activity in this week alone. The last seven days show more than twice as many new roles have been created in the UK job market compared to either November or September of last year. Is this the post-lockdown bounce back that many recruiters have been wishing for? For now, only time will tell.

Other Data

We need not end our analysis there. The raw market data provides us a wealth of other insights, too.

For example: all of the listed vacancies are those posted by direct employers – not other staffing agents or talent acquisition services. This means zero duplicate entries for multiple organisations hiring into the same role. It also highlights the volume of genuine sales opportunities available to recruiters online in the Jobfeed system.

And the feed stretches back many months. This can be valuable when seeking out sales opportunities for hard-to-fill roles which may have slipped off other recruiters’ radars. In fact, a further 120,000 (278,483 in total) vacancies can be found on the database. Each of these has an original post data that is older than the 30-day window of our study. For recruiters who know they have a database filled with candidates of a specialist skill set, these older placements can produce many rich pickings.

About eBoss UK Job Market Data

This live UK job market data is compiled by Jobfeed technology. The process is developed by our partners TextKernel, and integrated into our eBoss Complete system.

Jobfeed scours the web for new job openings. In fact, it checks tens of thousands of individual URLs each day to source job posts from portals, boards, and individual business and organisational websites. These job posts are automatically uploaded to our users’ desktops, in real time. For eBoss users, this feature becomes an invaluable head start in the competitive recruitment sales environment.

But what if you are a business leader? This data is just as valuable for setting goals and targets – and for anticipating wider market moves and trends. This job market data gives a snapshot of the health within the UK. Who is hiring? Is job creation growing, or slowing? All of these are crucial factors for business owners in the current climate.

So how valuable is it?

This data (and these reports) will always offer just a snapshot of UK job market data at any one time. It is compiled by automation, rather than data scientists. It is not balanced or normalised against seasonal changes, periods within a month, day of week, or even the time of day at which we extract the data from our systems. In this respect, there are countless individual variables which will factor into any changing trend in our report data.

On the other hand, these reports do provide an exact overview of available, publicly-listed vacancies at any one time. This is information which is collected by checking tens of thousands of individual web URLs and compiling that data in a digestible form.

The UK job market data which you can gain from these insights can help you in planning, resource allocation, KPI benchmarking and growth or profitability forecasting. You can adopt this data and use it as one part of the information which feeds your own business goals and objectives.

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