According to the latest data from CV-Library, the UK’s leading independent job board, job searches have increased by 6.6% in May, when looking at month-on-month data. In fact, the industries where searches have increased the most include construction (+32.2%), sales (+28.3%) and HR (+21.4%).

The job board looked at the number of searches made for jobs on its site between 1^st-25^th May and compared the figures with search numbers from 1^st-25^th April 2020. It reveals that job searches were also up in marketing (+20.9%), finance (+13.3%), IT (+11.5%), engineering (+7.8%), retail (+3.1%), manufacturing (+3.1%) and administration (+2.2%).

What’s more, the data shows that searches for the following roles spiked substantially in May:

Customer Service Advisor +95.2%

Administrative Assistant +75.8%

Manufacturing Operative +56.3%

Finance Assistant +51.7%

Construction Manager +47.5%

Health and Safety Advisor +47%

Apprenticeship +45.8%

Mechanical Engineer +41.1%

Warehouse Assistant +33.4%

Graduate +24%

Lee Biggins, founder and CEO of CV-Library, comments: “It’s a really unusual time for the UK labour market. We have people who have been made redundant and desperately need a new role; people who have been placed on furlough but actually want to get back to work, and people who may have been looking for a job before lockdown who are picking their searches back up as the economy starts to show signs of recovery. As a result, demand for jobs is continuing to increase and this is widespread across a huge variety of sectors. 

“At the same time, there will be an abundance of school, college and university leavers entering the job market in the coming months and our data shows that searches for apprenticeship and graduate positions have climbed significantly. This is good news for businesses who are hiring, but whether there will be enough jobs out there to meet this demand currently remains to be seen.”

In addition to these findings, CV-Library has analysed the amount of jobs posted on its site w/c 18^th May 2020 and compared this with figures from the previous week (w/c 11^th May) to build a real-time picture of how the market is performing. The findings show that job numbers increased by 5.4% last week, with certain industries experiencing even bigger hikes:

Management +108.6%

Distribution +104.1%

Media +64.3%

Recruitment +37.9%

Public Sector +28.3%

Sales +21.1%

Property +18.9%

Marketing +12%

Education +11.3%

Retail +6.7%

Biggins continues: “It is reassuring to see job numbers continue to climb week-on-week, but unfortunately they aren’t quite back to pre-lockdown levels. However, as more businesses start to return to work and open up their services to customers, we should see these figures rise throughout June and beyond. This should be welcome news to professionals who may be out of work right now and we hope we can continue to connect eager job hunters with relevant opportunities from the nation’s top employers and recruitment companies.”