What the UK job market actually looks like right now

Section one

The headline picture

Six numbers, each from the release named under it. Read them together rather than one at a time: unemployment is only slightly up, but the number of jobs being advertised has kept falling, and it is the gap between those two that decides how a job search actually feels.

The unemployment rate at 4.9% is low by historical standards and it is easy to read that as a healthy market. It is not the number that matters to someone applying. The one that matters is 707,000 advertised vacancies, which is 81,000 (10.3%) below the January to March 2020 pre-pandemic level, and the ONS puts that in a sentence worth reading twice.

“Outside of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic period, the last time there were 707,000 or fewer vacancies was in September to November 2014, when there were 703,000 vacancies.”

ONS, Vacancies and jobs in the UK: August 2026, published 18 August 2026, covering May to July 2026

Two honest caveats belong right here. First, the ONS puts the confidence interval on that vacancy estimate at approximately plus or minus 32,000, which is larger than the last two quarterly moves, so the 6,000 fall on the quarter is not by itself meaningful. The direction over two years is. Second, economic inactivity is 20.9% and largely unchanged on both the year and the quarter, so the rise in unemployment is not people leaving the labour force: it is people looking and not finding.

On pay: regular pay grew 3.5% over the year to April to June 2026, which after CPIH inflation left real regular pay up 0.5%. That cushion is thinning. CPI inflation was 2.9% in the twelve months to July 2026, up from 2.6% in June, and CPIH was 3.1%, up from 2.8%. Nominal pay growth has not moved up to meet it.

Section two

Where the vacancies actually are

The ONS publishes vacancies split by the eighteen SIC 2007 industry sections in its VACS02 dataset. The bars below are the latest three-month average; the grey tick on each bar is the same three months a year earlier, so you can see both how big a sector is and which way it is moving without either number having been worked out here.

Vacancies fell in 9 of the 18 sectors on the quarter and in 11 of the 18 over the year. The ONS names the movements precisely: the largest quarterly percentage fall was education, down 7.3% (4,000 vacancies), and the largest quarterly fall by volume was human health and social work activities, down 5,000 vacancies (4.1%). Over the year, the largest percentage falls were arts, entertainment and recreation, down 17.0% (3,000 vacancies), and water supply, sewerage, waste and remediation activities, down 11.3% (1,000 vacancies). The largest annual fall by volume was human health and social work, down 11,000 vacancies (8.5%), followed by wholesale and retail trade, down 7,000 (7.8%).

For the people this site is built for, three things stand out. Health and social work is still the single largest source of advertised vacancies in the country at 120,000, and it is also the sector shedding the most of them. Finance and insurance, at 30,000, is one of the smaller sections and it is down on the year, worth knowing if you are applying for junior accounting or analyst roles and wondering why the volume feels thin. And three sections are clearly up on the year, by margins well outside the rounding in this table: information and communication at 39,000 from 34,000, transport and storage at 35,000 from 30,000, and the small other service activities section at 15,000 from 11,000.

There is a size effect underneath all of this, and it is the most practical finding in the release. Vacancies at businesses with 1 to 9 employees fell 8,000 (7.8%) on the quarter to 95,000 and 18,000 (16.1%) over the year. Outside the pandemic that is the lowest level for that size band since January to March 2014. Small employers have pulled back hardest, and the ONS says why.

“Feedback from our Vacancy Survey suggests that some firms may not be recruiting because of increases in labour costs and other operating expenses.”

ONS, Vacancies and jobs in the UK: August 2026, published 18 August 2026

Section three

The shape, not the snapshot

A single quarter tells you almost nothing. Here is the same vacancy series over seven years, which shows what actually happened: a collapse in spring 2020, an overshoot to a genuine record in 2022, and then a decline that has run for four years and has now flattened at a level below where it started.

Now the same period expressed as competition. The ONS divides unemployed people by vacancies to get a measure of how tight the labour market is. In April to June 2022 there was one unemployed person for every vacancy. There are now 2.5.

Read those two charts together and you have the honest summary of the last four years. The number of jobs advertised is down 45% from its April to June 2022 peak of 1,294,000, and the number of unemployed people per vacancy has gone from 1.0 to 2.5 over the same period. Nothing about your CV changed in those four years. The denominator did.

Section four

The early-career picture

The averages hide what has happened to people starting out. The ONS publishes unemployment by age band; 18 to 24 is the band that describes someone looking for a first proper job rather than a sixth-former looking for Saturday work. It has moved a long way from the all-age rate.

The supporting figures, each from its own release. The House of Commons Library puts 739,000 people aged 16 to 24 as unemployed in April to June 2026, an unemployment rate of 16.2% for that age group. The ONS counted 1,012,000 young people not in education, employment or training in January to March 2026, 13.5% of all 16 to 24 year olds, up 89,000 on the year. And HMRC payroll records show the number of payrolled employees aged under 25 down by 7,000 between July 2025 and July 2026, while the number aged 65 and over rose by 68,000 over the same period.

That last pair is worth sitting with. The under-25 payroll fall is small in absolute terms. The problem is not that young people are being sacked in large numbers; it is that the doors are not opening. Which is exactly what the graduate recruitment data says.

Indeed's job postings data runs closer to real time and says the same thing. As of 10 July 2026, graduate job postings on Indeed were down around 7% on a year earlier and at their lowest level for that point in the year since 2020. Summer and seasonal postings, the other common first rung, were at a four-year low. Across all postings, Indeed had UK volumes down 11% since the start of 2026 and 32% below their 1 February 2020 baseline as of 17 July 2026, a level of weakness it notes the euro area and the United States are not sharing.

“The squeeze is falling hardest on those at the start of their careers... With youth unemployment already at a decade high, the data paints a concerning picture for a generation trying to establish a foothold in the labour market at one of its most challenging moments in recent memory.”

Indeed Hiring Lab, Indeed's 2026 Mid-Year UK Jobs and Hiring Trends Report, published 3 August 2026

Section five

What this means if you are looking now

The competition figure is the one to plan around

2.5 unemployed people per vacancy, 140 applications per graduate role, 290 in retail, FMCG and tourism. Those numbers do not describe a search that fails because of a formatting mistake on page two of a CV. They describe a search where the base rate per application is low and the only reliable lever is how many well-targeted applications you make and how early in a posting's life you make them. Anyone selling you a rewrite as the fix is selling you the wrong thing.

What is getting harder

Small employers. Vacancies at businesses with 1 to 9 employees are down 18,000 (16.1%) on the year, and at 95,000 the ONS says that is the lowest level for that size band since January to March 2014, outside the pandemic. Small firms are where a lot of first jobs and career-change jobs live, because they hire on attitude and fit rather than on a graduate scheme timetable. That route has narrowed sharply, and it narrowed for cost reasons the ONS reports directly from its own survey.

Health and social work, and education. Between them these two sections account for 165,000 of the country's 707,000 advertised vacancies (120,000 and 45,000), and both are down. That matters for the healthcare and education support roles a lot of career-changers move into. It is still where the largest single pool of advertised jobs sits, but it is a shrinking pool.

Salary information is getting scarcer, which makes targeting harder. Indeed had 58% of UK postings including pay in the three months to June 2026, down from a high of 64% in September 2024. When employers stop publishing pay, the burden of working out whether a role is worth applying for shifts onto you.

And employer intent is weak in a way that is measured rather than felt. The CIPD's Summer 2026 Labour Market Outlook puts its net employment balance at +9, near a record low, with only 62% of employers planning to recruit in the next three months and 57% in the private sector, which is the lowest that measure has been since the CIPD started collecting it in 2016, outside the pandemic.

What is genuinely improving

This is not a market with no good news in it, and pretending otherwise would be as dishonest as pretending it is fine. The KPMG and REC Report on Jobs published on 10 August 2026, from survey responses collected between 9 and 27 July, found that permanent staff placements stabilised in July, ending a 45-month run of decline. Demand for temporary workers rose for the first time in two years, temp billings rose for a fourth consecutive month, and overall demand for staff fell at the softest pace in 22 months. Starting salary inflation reached a six-month high.

Real pay is still positive, at 0.5% for regular pay in April to June 2026 after CPIH. Median pay in HMRC payroll records rose 4.2% in the year to July 2026, and fastest in health and social work at 5.3%. And three industry sections are advertising clearly more vacancies than a year ago: information and communication, transport and storage, and other service activities.

The temporary hiring signal is the most actionable thing on this page. Temp is the part of the market that is moving, and a three-month contract in the right team is a far better position from which to apply for permanent work than another month of applications from outside.

Where AI has actually landed

Two findings, both measured. Indeed reports 9.4% of UK job postings mentioned AI or related tools as of the end of June 2026, a record, with the share highest in data and analytics at 48.8% and spreading into marketing, scientific research and media and communications. On the other side of the desk, the ISE found 49% of graduate employers have no problem with candidates using AI during the recruitment process, 10% have banned it or put technical measures in place to prevent it, and 79% are redesigning or reviewing their recruitment processes in response, while 45% have given candidates no guidance at all about when its use is acceptable. That gap between what employers are changing and what they are telling applicants is, at the moment, the applicant's problem to navigate.

The ISE's own conclusion on the more alarming claim is worth quoting exactly, because it is more careful than most of the coverage.

“Our conclusion is that the jobs market remains challenging, especially for graduates, however no one is telling us that AI is replacing entry level jobs (yet).”

ISE, 5 trends from the Student Recruitment Survey 2025, published 22 October 2025

What this data cannot tell you

It cannot tell you about your sector in your city this week. Vacancy statistics are national, seasonally adjusted, three months wide and about six weeks old, and the ONS itself asks users to focus on long-run movements rather than short-term changes because Labour Force Survey estimates still carry volatility, particularly for smaller breakdowns. It cannot tell you how many of those 707,000 vacancies are real, open and being actively filled. And it says nothing about the roles that are never advertised. Use it to set your expectations and your pace. Do not use it to decide whether to apply.

Section six

Sources

Every release used on this page, with the period it covers and the date it was published. All of them were read in full on 19 August 2026 rather than cited from memory or from secondary coverage.

1. 01 · Office for National Statistics

   Labour market overview, UK: August 2026

   Period covered:

   Labour Force Survey estimates for April to June 2026; vacancies May to July 2026; PAYE RTI to July 2026

   Published:

   18 August 2026

2. 02 · Office for National Statistics

   Vacancies and jobs in the UK: August 2026

   Period covered:

   Vacancies for May to July 2026; workforce jobs for March 2026

   Published:

   18 August 2026

3. 03 · Office for National Statistics

   VACS02: Vacancies by industry

   Period covered:

   Three-month rolling averages, April to June 2001 to May to July 2026

   Published:

   18 August 2026

4. 04 · Office for National Statistics

   A01: Summary of labour market statistics (Table 9, unemployment by age and duration; Table 20, vacancies and unemployment)

   Period covered:

   Three-month rolling averages, March to May 1992 to April to June 2026

   Published:

   18 August 2026

5. 05 · Office for National Statistics and HM Revenue and Customs

   Earnings and employment from Pay As You Earn Real Time Information, UK: August 2026

   Period covered:

   Payrolled employees and median pay to July 2026 (July is an early estimate)

   Published:

   18 August 2026

6. 06 · Office for National Statistics

   Consumer price inflation, UK: July 2026

   Period covered:

   12 months to July 2026

   Published:

   19 August 2026

7. 07 · Office for National Statistics

   Young people not in education, employment or training (NEET), UK: May 2026

   Period covered:

   January to March 2026

   Published:

   28 May 2026

8. 08 · House of Commons Library

   Youth unemployment statistics (research briefing SN05871)

   Period covered:

   April to June 2026

   Published:

   18 August 2026

9. 09 · Institute of Student Employers

   Student Recruitment Survey 2025, reported in “5 trends you need to know from ISE’s Recruitment Survey 2025”

   Period covered:

   The 2024/25 student recruitment year, with employer forecasts for 2025/26

   Published:

   22 October 2025

10. 10 · Indeed Hiring Lab (Jack Kennedy)

    Indeed’s 2026 Mid-Year UK Jobs and Hiring Trends Report

    Period covered:

    Job postings data to 17 July 2026; graduate and summer postings to 10 July 2026

    Published:

    3 August 2026

11. 11 · KPMG and the Recruitment and Employment Confederation, compiled by S&P Global

    KPMG and REC, UK Report on Jobs: August 2026

    Period covered:

    Survey responses collected 9 to 27 July 2026 from around 400 UK recruitment consultancies

    Published:

    10 August 2026

12. 12 · Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development

    Labour Market Outlook – Summer 2026

    Period covered:

    Employer hiring and pay intentions for the three months ahead, from a survey of 2,000+ employers

    Published:

    16 August 2026