The UK faces some of its lowest employment rates in nearly a decade as the country continues to battle with coronavirus.

A report released by job search engine Adzuna has shown a 42% reduction in total job vacancies available in just eight weeks since the outbreak first started.

As the nation enters its fourth week of lockdown, the strain it is having on a once stable economy are starting to show. Just this week, Chancellor Rishi Sunak forewarned that “tough-times” are ahead for Britain’s economy as the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) warned the pandemic could see the economy shrink by a record 35% by June 2020.

Such a statistic is not a good sign for the UK’s employment market where the biggest drop is being seen in the hospitality sector with open availabilities seeing a 74% drop, which is a further 8% decline from last week’s reports.

The UK jobs market has been hit the worst compared to other countries. Despite America’s growing concerns over the pandemic, they are currently only facing a 38% reduction in advertised vacancies.

Andrew Hunter, Co-Founder of Adzuna, comments “We are continuing to see vacancies in the hospitality industry decline and it’s no surprise, with the lockdown measures set to still be in place for the foreseeable future, that this figure will continue to decrease.

“Interestingly the UK reduction in hospitality vacancies is significantly higher than we are seeing in neighbouring countries, however, this is reflective of the different phases of the pandemic each country is in at this time and we anticipate other countries will see a similar impact

“Although the vacancy figures are on a steady decline, we are confident that the UK job market will bounce back from this once we have passed the peak of the pandemic, but we can expect to see this downward trend continue over the next few weeks”.

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