The number of job adverts in the UK continued to rise in late August, with the number of active job postings reaching 1.12 million in the last week of the month, with almost 107,000 new jobs being uploaded during the same week.

This research comes from the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) Jobs Recovery Tracker, which found that jobs advertised in the north-west of England rose by 2 per cent in late August and by 1.3 per cent in Northern Ireland and Wales. Since May, these three regions have shown the largest increase in job postings.

The top hiring hotspot in England was Mid Lancashire with 5.4 per cent, there were four in Wales and three in Northern Ireland.

However, job postings fell in Scotland by 3.5 per cent in the last two weeks of August. The top two areas which experienced the worst drops in jobs were Falkirk by -11.3 per cent and West Dunbartonshire by -16.3 per cent, both in Scotland. Back in July the REC found that Scotland and Wales were leading the recovery out of UK countries in job adverts, with increases of 3.6 per cent and 2.3 per cent respectively between the 25/05/20 and the 07/06/20.

Blue collar roles saw an increase in jobs advertised and non-critical care medical procedures that were delayed by COVID-19 started to see an increase in jobs with podiatrists (+5.6 per cent), dental nurses (+5.4 per cent) and other health professionals (+5.7 per cent).

Neil Carberry, chief executive of the REC, said:

The trend of improvement in hiring we are seeing may be slow, but it is sure. As schools re-open and more businesses open up workplaces, we expect to see more adverts as firms change to reflect the new normal – including adapting air conditioning, it seems.

But we can’t assume an upturn in hiring means we are out of the woods, given the likely scale of job losses this autumn as firms adapt to the new reality. Government needs to work with the jobs specialists of our world-leading recruitment and staffing sector to deliver support to jobseekers urgently and encourage firms to hire. Supporting jobs through a cut in employers’ National Insurance and more flexibility in training support would both help to increase hiring activity and, more importantly, build business confidence.

Matthew Mee, director, workforce intelligence at labour market analysis firm, Emsi said:

It’s encouraging to see continued recovery of recruitment marketing activity, which is also supported by the overall increase in estimated UK wide job vacancies, which rose from 337K (Apr to Jun) to an estimated 370K (May to July) according to the latest government figures.

When we look at the latest week’s postings data, whilst it still appears key worker sectors are dominating overall volumes, however we are seeing increased activity from several companies across the construction, technology and retail sectors.

The Jobs Recovery Tracker is produced by the REC in partnership with Emsi, using their job postings analytics data which is harvested from tens of thousands of job boards.