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Recruiters and HRs - Current employment trends

ended 25. January 2023

The Office for National Statistics just published their “Employment trends outside cities and towns, England and Wales: 2009 to 2021”, which you can read in full >>here<<.

Here are the main findings (you can find three questions for HRs, recruiters and job experts after these points).

  • Between 2009 and 2021, employment in England and Wales grew by 20% in out-of-town locations compared with 7% within towns and 14% within large cities (excluding London).
  • Employment growth rates were higher in out-of-town locations than in towns and cities in 81% of travel-to-work areas in England and Wales.
  • Of the employment growth in out-of-town locations, 87% occurred within 2 kilometres of town or city boundaries.
  • The contributions to overall employment growth across England and Wales between 2009 and 2021 were 35% for London, 16% for large cities, 30% for towns and 19% for out-of-town locations.
  • The manufacturing, retail and administrative and support service sectors grew more strongly in out-of-town locations than in towns or cities, for example in the retail sector, employment in towns declined by 6% while employment out of town grew by 12%.

Here are the questions the media is looking to have answered:

  1. Are you seeing a trend for employers relocating outside of cities? If so, what are the drivers?
  2. What are the current challenges employers are facing in recruiting talent?
  3. What are the main things job hunters are looking for in a new employer right now?

3 responses from the Newspage community

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Editor
Samuel Mather-Holgate
Independent Financial Adviser at Mather and Murray Financial
It’s no surprise that the trend of out-of-towning has continued since Covid. More employers and offering remote or hybrid working and more employees are looking for this option. Working and living in a city involves congestion and higher cost of living, totally the opposite of the desires of a mainly millennial work force. This is a step change, here for good, and it brings a massive environmental benefit too.
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Jill Cotton
Career Trends Expert at Glassdoor
Glassdoor found 55% of UK talent acquisition specialists think it is more difficult to attract and retain staff now than it was in 2020. The most significant hiring challenges facing employers are 1) salary expectations not aligning with what the company pays 2) best candidates receiving multiple offers 3) company receiving too few qualified candidates 3) Applicants lacking the skills specified in the job description (23%) 5) building a quality pipeline of job candidates takes too much time and resources. For job hunters, salary remains the #1 consideration when looking for a new role. But candidates overwhelmingly expect more flexible work options and want their own values to align with the mission and culture of their employer. High salaries may lure talent, but pay is the least important driver for worker satisfaction when in a role.
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Katie Elliott
Director at HR Katie
The main challenge faced by employers is the shrinking talent pool, particularly in specialist industries. In engineering, there is a huge shortage of new graduates coming through, and reports say we actually need to double the number of engineering graduates by 2020 to keep up with the demand for jobs. This is compounded by finance and banking mopping up a lot of the economically ambitious grads that do make it, so the need to nurture homegrown talent (thanks to Brexit!) is even more acute in the power and engineering industries.