UK jobs | Vacancies plummeted by more than 60% in Q2

The unprecedented devastating effects of the coronavirus pandemic on the UK workforce are yet to be fully realised; recent ONS data discovered that over 600,000 people lost their jobs within the lockdown, whilst each day different companies announce redundancies and downsizing as they struggle to regain normality.

This week, Marks & Spencer is expected to reveal its latest spate of job cuts, after revealing that it plans to ‘restructure’ its workforce. It joins the likes of John Lewis & Partners, Boots and Debenhams in culling roles.

And these cuts aren’t localised to the retail industry. New data from CV-Library has found that overall job numbers plummeted by 62.7% in Q2 2020, compared to the previous year and by a further 61.2% quarter-on-quarter as businesses struggled to function during the pandemic.

The study analysed millions of data points from the CV-Library site between April 1 and June 30, 2020, to build an understanding of how the UK jobs market faired during these challenging months. It discovered that the largest drop in vacancies year-on-year was experienced in all corners of the UK, including Bristol (down 70.2%), Leeds (down 69.6%), Birmingham (down 68%) and Glasgow (down 67.9%).