While 2023 has seen significantly lower levels of recruitment for clinical-specific functions, the forecast for 2024 is bullish, with the immediate projection being for two times more clinical vacancies in 2024 than in 2023.
As Europe’s most advanced e-commerce market, the UK has approximately 60 million e-commerce users. With that, shopping online has become the norm, which has had implications for retailers on the high street, especially outside of main shopping hubs, where the pandemic period had resulted in a significant surge in activity. Now, post-pandemic, there has been a slowdown as the market has normalized, which has meant that when looking at e-commerce, there has been a drop of 42.5% in IT vacancies compared to 2022, according to the latest UK Tech Report by Talent Alpha and Vacancysoft.
The transition from the post-pandemic strategy of emphasising rapid talent acquisition and growth to prioritising efficiency and client service has resulted in a significant drop in recruitment for tax specialists this year, with vacancies forecast to be 31.1% down on 2022 according to a recent report by recruitment specialists Morgan Mckinley and market data providers, Vacancysoft.
Looking at this year by business quarter, we can see that there was a 6.8% increase in legal vacancies across commerce and industry in Q3 compared to Q2, which bodes well for the remainder of the year. Q4 is typically the busiest quarter of the year for vacancies overall, so we would expect to see that translate into vacancies for legal counsel. This is according to the latest UK Legal Labour Market Trends report by Search, and labour market data analysts Vacancysoft.
When analyzing trends in Med Tech, we see 2023 is set to witness a substantial 27.9% increase in vacancies compared to 2019, indicating steady and robust growth. Similarly, in 2023, scientific jobs are projected to represent a 21.2% share of all vacancies, marking a notable improvement compared to the 14.2% share recorded in 2022, according to the latest Life Sciences Labour Market Trends report by CPL and market data analysts Vacancysoft.
Comparing the South’s professional vacancies to the National total, while England and Wales as a whole are predicted to see a decrease, the South as a region could increase its market share, potentially reaching 29.8% in 2023 according to APSCo and labour market data analysts Vacancysoft.