Recruitment starts to recover, ONS and Adzuna finds

The figures also show that online job adverts increased in the retail sector by 35.1% from between 5 June and 12 June due to the easing of lockdown rules in the UK, with Adzuna claiming the figures show the beginning of the recovery process for the UK economy since the Covid-19 pandemic took hold.

The increase was spread evenly across a number of sectors, particularly in health and education, the research found, and up from a low of 41.8% of the 2019 average for job vacancies.

But the research warned that despite the recent uptick, there was a long way to go before the economy made a full recovery from Covid-19, with job vacancies down 55% since January 2020.

The hospitality sector has been worst hit, according to the research, with vacancies falling 86% compared with 2019.

The research also showed insecurity around consumer spending was still greatly affecting graduate jobs (down 77%), and sales, consultancy, energy and administration jobs, which all are 75% down from last year.

Health and social care vacancies, however, were at 102.9% of the average for 2019.

Andrew Hunter co-founder of Adzuna, said: “We hope this will be the first sign of an upward trend. However, the road to recovery could be long and we don’t want to start celebrating prematurely.

“Uncertainty around lockdown measures and consumer spending is likely to cause many businesses to hold back on hiring plans for the foreseeable future. We predict that the UK job market could take up to 12 to 18 months to fully recover and go back to the levels we saw last year.”