// The retail jobs market is showing signs of recovery, but retail is still lagging, according to LinkedIn
// The national hiring rate jumped from -49% to -31%. Retail remains at -34%.
New data has revealed that the UK jobs market is showing signs of starting to recover, but the rate is uneven across industries – especially in retail.
According to new data from LinkedIn, while the UK is recovering as lockdown restrictions start to ease, hiring in retail showed no signs of improvement and remains below the national average.
Overall, the first week of eased lockdown restrictions saw hiring in the UK climb to a national average of -31 per cent, compared to this time last year.
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While the hiring rate is still negative, this national average is an improvement from the -49 per cent recorded around a month ago at the height of lockdown.
At the industry level, the data shows that most UK industries have improved from the deep declines seen a few weeks ago, but the rate of recovery is uneven.
While hiring levels across all industries remain down on last year, LinkedIn said hiring in retail was -34 per cent and with no sign of improvement in hiring over the last two weeks.
Other sectors which were also below the natonal average include entertainment (-51 per cent), media and communications (-38 per cent), construction (-38 per cent), manufacturing (-41 per cent) and recreation and travel (-66 per cent).
Legal, software and IT services and corporate services saw the strongest rebound in hiring, trending at -16/17 per cent year-on-year.
“UK retailers have experienced huge turbulence during the pandemic, particularly those that lack digital capabilities or have not been able to adapt business models for a Covid-19 world,” LinkedIn director Janine Chamlerlin said.
“LinkedIn data shows that retail has shown no movement in hiring over the last two weeks, with hiring still below the national average.
“We hope to see improvement soon as lockdown measures lift and consumer demand helps to reignite the industry and create more opportunity for workers.”
LinkedIn’s data is based on its LinkedIn Hiring Rate (LHR, which is the percentage of LinkedIn members who added a new employer to their profile in the same month the new job began, divided by the total number of LinkedIn members in that country.
A 14-day rolling sum of hires is calculated to reduce noise from the daily data and is divided by the daily LinkedIn member count in that specific country.
These 14-day rolling sum hiring rates are then matched with the same day of week last year to control for day of week effects in hiring data and the year-over-year percentage change of hiring rates is calculated.
LinkedIn’s data is based on its 28 million members in the UK, which represents two-thirds of the UK workforce.
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