The jobs market is benefiting from a pre-Christmas boost, according to new research from Adzuna.
In October, there were 0.64 per cent more vacancies than there were six months ago, the first time the six-monthly reading has been positive in 2024.
The reading suggests that the jobs market has stabilised compared to the first half of the year, which saw sharp falls in the number of new job openings.
Around 23,000 Christmas jobs are on offer, Adzuna said, with the vacancies concentrated in retail and hospitality alongside the trade and construction sector.
“Driven by preparations for the busy Christmas shopping season, sectors like trade & construction and retail are ramping up hiring. We are excited to see where this leads as we head into the new year,” Andrew Hunter, co-founder of the job search site, said.
Despite the Christmas boost, the number of vacancies actually fell in October, although the monthly fall was relatively small at just 0.17 per cent.
“Steep drops in vacancies in the first half of 2024 appear to have stalled,” the firm said.
According to their figures, there are slightly more than two jobseekers per vacancy, up from around one-and-a-half a year ago.
The figures come amid continued concern about the state of the UK labour market. The Office for National Statistics’ (ONS) flagship labour force survey is suffering from very low response rates, which is contributing to volatile unemployment readings and uncertainty about the inactivity rate.
The official statistics suggest that the unemployment rate increased to 4.3 per cent in the three months to September, up from 4.0 per cent in the previous period.
Economic inactivity, meanwhile, is thought to be significantly higher than it was before the pandemic, weighing on the UK’s potential supply.
But a report released last week by the Resolution Foundation suggested that the ONS was painting an overly pessimistic picture of the labour market. In particular, the report questioned whether the rate of economic inactivity was as high as the ONS suggests.
“Official statistics have misrepresented what has happened in the UK labour market since the pandemic,” Adam Corlett, principal economist at the think tank, said. “The ONS Labour Force Survey appears to have ‘lost’ almost a million workers over the past few years compared to better sources.”