New figures suggest that the London job market is falling behind the rest of the country.
The Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC) revealed on Friday that whilst job advertisements were rising in the north-west England and Wales, London was seeing a fall.
Between March and October, job adverts in the north-west jumped 36.8% whilst in Wales they surged 33.4%. Meanwhile in London, the number fell by 18.7% over the period.
Matthew Mee, director of workforce intelligence at Emsi, commented on the new findings: “One of the most interesting developments we are seeing in terms of employer demand is the ‘London lag’, which is seeing the capital return to pre-lockdown levels at a much slower rate than other regions of the country.
“When we couple this with the fact that furlough take-up has been higher in London than elsewhere, and that the highest rise in claimant counts has been in the London commuter belt, it seems that the restrictions since March may well have had a greater proportionate impact on the capital than on other regions of the country,” he added.
From the numbers, it was found that the number of job adverts for nurses amid the pandemic shot up. Since March, the number of active job postings for nurses grew by 39%.
Within the hospitality sector, postings for bar staff plunged -48.7% whilst adverts for chefs fell by -45.6%.
In the three months to September, unemployment rose to 4.8%. REC boss Neil Carberry said: “Unemployment and redundancy numbers earlier this week showed that this is a tough moment for our jobs market.”
“But we also know that there are always jobs being created by those businesses who can, and as this data reveals, there is hope to be found in many places and sectors.”
