UK employers had an estimated 862,000 vacancies in April to June 2021, putting recruitment demand 9.9% above its January to March 2020 level, the Office for National Statistics reported on July 15. That did not mean working capacity had recovered alongside it. A separate ONS release put actual weekly hours worked in March to May 2021 6.7% below December 2019 to February 2020. The periods and comparison bases differ, but the distinction is clear: open posts measure demand for staff, not work already being done. [S1][S2]

The vacancy estimate is a stock, not a count of people hired over the quarter. It covers positions for which employers are actively seeking recruits from outside their organisation; agriculture, forestry and fishing are excluded from the survey. Vacancies rose 38.8% from the previous quarter, but that does not establish an equivalent rise in hiring. The seasonally adjusted headline is also a three-month average. ONS warned that this introduces a lag and pointed to experimental single-month vacancy estimates and online job adverts for a more recent view of June. [S1]

The national rebound was uneven. Accommodation and food services had 102,000 vacancies, up 73,400 from the previous quarter, and stood 21.1% above its pre-pandemic level. Transport and storage, by contrast, was one of only three industries still below January to March 2020, alongside mining and quarrying and wholesale and retail trade, including motor-vehicle repair. All three had improved on the quarter. For a logistics business, the national milestone was therefore not evidence that its own industry had crossed the same threshold. [S1]

UK actual weekly hours worked by people aged 16 and over reached 981.4 million in March to May 2021, up 23.3 million from the previous quarter on a seasonally adjusted basis. That still left hours 6.7% below December 2019 to February 2020. The employment rate for people aged 16 to 64 was 74.8%, below the same pre-pandemic period by 1.8 percentage points. These measures describe work performed and people employed, rather than employers’ unfilled positions. [S2]

Headcount itself could conceal unused working time. ONS counted furloughed workers, and self-employed people temporarily away from work with a reasonable expectation of returning, as employed. Someone absent for a whole week could therefore remain in employment while contributing no actual hours that week. For capacity planning, an employment total and a vacancy total cannot substitute for a record of hours worked: the former includes people temporarily away, while the latter concerns recruitment still under way. [S1][S2]

ONS changed the Labour Force Survey’s weights in July, revising estimates back to January to March 2020 and revising seasonal factors for actual hours over that span. It said the new weights had relatively small effects on headline rates but larger effects on levels and changes in levels. Analysts comparing employment or hours before and during the pandemic therefore need the revised historical figures in the July release, not an unrevised starting point taken from an older bulletin. [S1][S2]

Source documents

  1. Vacancies and jobs in the UK: July 2021https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/jobsandvacanciesintheuk/july2021
  2. Employment in the UK: July 2021https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/employmentintheuk/july2021