“Today’s figures paint a more realistic picture of the current hiring landscape and our own data echoes this. Indeed, we found that job numbers dropped by 4.1% in the first quarter of 2020, when comparing data with the previous year, while vacancies fell by a staggering 65.7% in April alone. In terms of employment, it will take some time for official figures to truly reflect the state of the UK labour market, especially now the Job Retention Scheme has been extended until October. 

“Right now, many organisations are hanging on the every word of the government in order to understand how they can weather this storm and protect their workforce. From our conversations, we know that businesses are starting to prepare for the recovery, especially as many industries were permitted to go ‘back to work’ this week. At the same time, job searches for specific roles are increasing on our site, so there’s certainly an appetite amongst candidates. “