Reliable predictions are not available to any of us right now but following our post back in March, we wanted to bring you the latest insights we’ve gleaned across a range of sectors to help you understand the context in which you are planning your future. LinkedIn are monitoring the effects on job postings in the UK and split industries into 3 categories; “responding”, “weathering” and “adversely impacted”. We’ve used these headings to show how different sectors have been affected in different ways.
In Part 1 we focused on sectors which are “weathering” the crisis. Today we’ll look at those sectors which are most “adversely impacted”.
It is worth noting that some of the worst affected industries do have rather less graduate hiring than others e.g. Beauty, food preparation and service, hospitality and travel (ESRI UK)
“No doubt the UK graduate labour market is seriously affected but the non-graduate job market appears to be bearing the brunt of the effects right now”. – Charlie Ball Head of Higher Education Intelligence at Prospects
According to the latest research by job search engine Adzuna the hospitality and catering industry is one the biggest casualties in the UK job market, with vacancies down by 74%. Other industries heavily impacted include energy (-66%), admin (-63%), travel (-61%) and HR and recruitment (-61%)
The travel and tourism industry is one of the worst hit. Given the slump in domestic and international air travel, airlines and in turn the aerospace industry are likely to take time to recover.
With a slump in the use of both private (car) and public transport (taxis, buses, rail, sea and air) and with much manufacturing shut down, demand for oil & gas has dropped sharply. This will likely impact on jobs in the sector, with industry body Oil & Gas UK warning that 30,000 jobs could be lost as a result of the coronavirus pandemic and the low oil price.
Media and Print Journalism
Journalism has been hit hard with print runs reduced, advertising pulled and staff furloughed. Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, director of the Reuters Institute at the University of Oxford, predicted in The Guardian that “the economic effects of the pandemic could potentially remove 10% of all frontline journalistic jobs in the UK.” Expect to see a continuing shift to online as “People are going to spend a lot of time online for the foreseeable future,” he said. “And so far, we have few examples of people returning to offline media once they have embraced online ones.” Neilson
Small/Medium organisations harder hit than large businesses
Evidence so far suggests smaller businesses are feeling the impact harder than larger businesses and may have fewer opportunities in the short-term. However government support has been significant including a recent £1.3 billion package to support start-ups.
It is too early to draw any firm conclusions but we are starting to see some labour market regional differences. Charlie Ball notes that “There’s increasing evidence that different regions will be affected more than others and the cities with large graduate recruitment markets – particularly London – look to be faring better.”
The Centre for Cities has published analysis on the potential effects of the pandemic on different UK urban areas. This looks at how vulnerable local jobs are to lockdown and predicts that manufacturing centres such as Crawley, Luton and Derby, which have considerable aviation and automotive employment are much more exposed than regions with a different mix of employment.
Stephen Isherwood, Chief Executive of the ISE advises “Don’t panic, there will be jobs and there are things you can do. Stay active in your job hunt, work on your career choices and be flexible”
Certain sectors have been harder hit than others by the pandemic. While the picture of the economic impact is still emerging, there are some areas where recruitment will be impacted. If this applies to the area that you were planning to go into then you may need to temporarily re-assess and look at another area. We can help with finding your plan B and adapting your CV to a new sector.
See our previous post on sectors weathering the crisis.
Coming soon: our next post will focus on the sectors which are “responding” well in the current situation.
(Image by kmicican on Pixabay)
