The amount of jobs being advertised fell by 47% in July when comparing data with a year ago, according to new research from CV-Library.
Despite this, there were 31.7% more vacancies available in June, suggesting that the job market is “slowly picking back up”.
The cities with the biggest drop in job vacancies year-on-year were Aberdeen (down 73.9%), Glasgow (down 57.9%), Portsmouth (down 55.1%), Bristol (down 54.7%) and Leeds (down 52%).
Key industries also saw job numbers drop significantly year-on-year, including catering (down 83.9%), design (down 79.7%), administration (down 77.8%), media (down 76.2% (and leisure/tourism (down 75.9%).
In addition to this, the only industries to see an increase in job adverts year-on-year were the public sector, where vacancies rose by a massive 61.9%, and social care, where they increased by 2.7%.
However, average pay actually rose by 5.7% year-on-year from £34,956 in July 2019 to £36,958 in July 2020.
Average salaries did drop in industries hit-hard by the pandemic, such as leisure/tourism (down 7.3%), catering (down 6.1%), charity (down 5.1%), hospitality (4.9%) and media (down 3.1%).
CV-Library said: “While it’s a promising sign that salaries are higher than they were a year ago, the month-on-month dip in pay for new jobs does suggest that companies are starting to make difficult decisions about their workforce.
“Candidates may well expect to take a pay cut during an economic downturn, but be prepared to have difficult conversations with applicants who may be expecting more than you can offer right now.”
