Recruiting will become tougher as advertised salaries 'continue to slide'

Bridging the UK talent gap is becoming harder as advertised salaries continue to drop and companies shift their focus on retaining rather than recruiting staff, according to Adzuna’s latest UK Job Market Report.  

The average advertised salary decreased to £33,318 in August, which was a 4.5% drop from one year earlier when the average salary was at £34,695.

At the same time, the number of vacancies increased by 30% from last year. However, many of those positions were left unfulfilled due to a lack of skilled labour.

Rebecca Harkins is a PR Specialist at Adzuna and the author of the report. She says that this trend is sure to continue. Harkins tells Executive Grapevine: “It follows on from the fact that employers are shifting their focus from recruiting talent to retaining talent. If you think about the scarce number of highly skilled people in any given field that there are in the UK, if there is now a focus on retaining them, then it will be very much harder for other people to recruit them.”