UK graduate labour market update: 27 April

The latest labour market update from Charlie Ball focuses on research around work-life balance and the impact of the move towards home or hybrid working since the pandemic

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has delivered its weekly update on the economic and social change in the UK:

• Total online job adverts increased by 4% in the week to 14 April 2022, to 144% of their February 2020 average level.
• A net 2% of firms reported increasing turnover in March 2022 compared with the previous month.
• The level of potential redundancies stands at 88% of the pre-pandemic baseline, and the number of employers proposing redundancies is also below pre-pandemic levels, at 78%.

The ONS Business insights and impact on the UK economy reported on 21 April:

• Of businesses not permanently stopped trading, 14% reported that they were experiencing a shortage of workers in early April 2022, compared with 13% in early March 2022. For businesses with ten or more employees, these percentages were 34% and 31%, respectively.
• Of the 14% of businesses that reported a shortage of workers, the biggest effects of these shortages were: businesses being unable to meet demands (50%), up from 47% in early March 2022; employees working increased hours (43%), down from 47% in early March 2022; pausing trading of some of the business (20%), up from 13% in early March 2022; recruiting temporary workers (13%), up from 12% in early March 2022.
• The two main concerns reported by businesses that had not permanently stopped trading for April 2022 continued to be input price inflation (24%) and energy prices (21%). The percentage of businesses reporting no concerns remained broadly stable, at 19%.
• In early April 2022, 23% of not permanently stopped trading businesses reported that they were using, or intending to use, increased homeworking as a permanent business model, with improved staff well-being reported as the main reason for doing so, at 60%.

The Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) have examined the Adzuna data used in the regular ONS updates to look at how the UK jobs market has changed since COVID:

• The number of vacancies has been stable, and at least 20% above pre-pandemic levels, since Autumn 2021. As a result, almost all unemployed workers face more job vacancies that match their skills than they would have done before the pandemic.
• After a massive collapse in hiring and a large skew in vacancies towards sectors such as healthcare during the pandemic, the overall mix of vacancies advertised today is similar to before the pandemic.
• However, if we focus on those changes that have taken place, we can see a systematic pattern: a shift towards vacancies in lower-skilled and lower-paid occupations.
• The rise in opportunities is also most pronounced for low-educated jobseekers: 70% of unemployed workers without a degree had opportunities that were more than 40% higher than they would have had before the pandemic, compared with 44% of those with a degree. Men and younger workers see the most elevated labour market opportunities.

The CIPD have a new report out continuing their excellent work on flexible working. This is a great report full of useful insight, and well worth reading:

• There has been an increase in employers supporting and already providing a day one right to request flexible working (FW).
• More than a third (37%) have seen an increase in requests for FW in the last six months.
• Over half of organisations (56%) believe that it is important to provide flexible working as an option when advertising jobs. They see this as a key way of attracting staff and addressing skill or labour shortages.
• More than two-fifths of organisations (42%) say they will be more likely to grant requests for flexible working, besides working from home, compared with before the pandemic
• Just over half of employees (51%) say they have flexible working arrangements (FWA) in their current role. Women (55%) are more likely than men (47%) to have FWA.
• Since the start of the pandemic, 46% of employees have worked from home all or most of the time, while 37% have not worked from home at all.
• On average, organisations expect around a fifth (21%) of their workforce to work from home all the time once the crisis is over, while they expect 40% of their workforce to work from home on a regular basis.
• Those employees who have flexible working arrangements in their current role are more likely to be satisfied than those who don't, including in relation to their work–life balance, control over work, their job overall and their line manager.
• Almost half (45%) of employees with an FWA describe this as informal, just a quarter describe it as formal, with a further 28% describing their FWA as a combination of formal and informal.
• Employees with a mixture of formal and informal FWA are more satisfied than those with either formal or informal arrangements on a range of work-related areas, including their work–life balance, manager and job.
• Currently, organisations are most likely to offer part-time hours (61%), working from home on a regular basis (57%) and flexitime (38%).
• Organisations plan to expand a range of flexible working arrangements, including working from home on a regular basis (46%), part-time working (38%), flexitime (37%), full-time homeworking (25%) and job-sharing (18%).
• Working from home on a regular basis (61%) and informal flexibility (43%) are the most common types of flexibility employees report. However, when asked what arrangements people would use, if possible, in their roles, the highest number would like flexitime (42%), working from home on a regular/ad hoc basis (40%), informal flexibility (38%) and compressed hours (32%).
• 4% of employees say they have left a job in the last year specifically due to a lack of flexible working and 9% have changed their careers/profession due to a lack of flexible working options within the sector.
• 41% of organisations say more home/hybrid working has increased their organisation's productivity/efficiency.
• Employee productivity also remains steady, with 43% thinking that employees in their organisation are generally more productive when they are working from home/in a hybrid way.
• Overall, the findings show substantial improvements from when the CIPD surveyed on this issue in December 2020, when 33% of employers said that the increase in home-working had increased their organisation's productivity/efficiency, while 23% said that it had decreased it.
• When it comes to the key benefits of shifting to increased homeworking or hybrid working, respondents point to: improved work-life balance (69%), improved employee satisfaction (48%), improved business flexibility and improved employee wellbeing (41%).
• Some of the top issues faced as a result of the shift to increased home or hybrid working include: increased stress or mental health problems due to working remotely (44%), difficulty in working as expected for employees who lack space or privacy (43%), and employee conflict due to the challenges of communication and team relationships (34%).

ACAS have surveyed employers about potential redundancies:

• 18% are likely to make staff redundancies over the next year.
• 30% of large businesses are likely to make redundancies and 10% of SMEs said that were likely to do so.

TotalJobs have released their latest Hiring Trends Index:

• 78% of businesses recruited in Q1 2022.
• Only 53% of businesses are confident they will recruit the people they need next quarter.
• 47% of workers want to see additional staff hired to make workload more manageable, while 27% of businesses cite skills shortages as a challenge in the coming months.
• 38% of workers report that their workload is 'unmanageable' due to staff shortages.
• 79% of workers reported experiencing at least one symptom of burnout since the start of the year. Younger workers were far more likely to be experiencing symptoms of burnout than older generations, with this figure rising to 88% of 18 to 24-year-olds versus 67% of those aged over 55.

The Northern Irish jobs market seems to be rebalancing after COVID disruption:

• NIJobs recorded a 20% rise in applications for roles in the first three months of 2022, compared to the same period last year.
• The top in-demand professional roles that companies have been seeking throughout Q1 include software engineers and developers, project managers and business analysts.

More on work-life balance, this time from Ireland:

• 39% of Irish employees were remote working at some stage during 2021, while 1 in 12 (8%) had availed of some form of remote working pre COVID-19.
• Full-time workers in large organisations were most likely to have worked remotely in the 12 months prior to interview - nearly half (49%) of full-time employees working in organisations of 100 people or more had worked remotely at some point during the previous year compared with just over 3 in 10 (31%) full-time workers in organisations of less than 20 people.
• Professionals were most likely to have worked remotely (63%), followed by managers, directors & senior officials and associate professional & technical in joint second place (51%) while by comparison, skilled trade workers had the lowest level of uptake of remote working (3%).
• Pre COVID-19, information & communication sector workers had availed most of working remotely (30%), compared to employees in the Human health & social work activities (2%).
• Workers reported high job and life satisfaction levels, with little difference in satisfaction levels based on employee's working arrangements.
• Workers who were working mostly from home with a mix of office, hub or travel were most satisfied with both their job (92%) and life as a whole (94%).

Written by

Charlie Ball

Senior consultant: labour market intelligence

Jisc