New YouGov data feeding into the latest CIPD/The Adecco Group Labour Market Outlook report reveals that among UK employers that currently have job vacancies, two thirds (66%) are finding those posts difficult to fill.
A third of organisations (30%) with vacancies say they are not having trouble recruiting for the roles and 3% don’t know.
The custom research conducted by YouGov indicates that this number is higher than in spring 2018 (61%) and spring 2017 (56%). Added to this, organisations with hard-to-fill vacancies report that the density of hard-to-fill vacancies is higher now (40%) in their organisation now compared with three months ago (30%).
The share of employers with recruitment difficulties is higher in the public sector (70%) than the private sector (66%) and voluntary sector (57%).
The study also reveals that for two in five employers (39%) it has become more difficult to fill vacancies over the past 12 months, which they have attributed to a combination of fewer applicants and less suitable candidates.
It appears as though some industries are worse off than others in this regard. Among the overall population of employers, including those without any current vacancies, around half of employers in the IT (50%), transport and storage (50%) and construction (47%) sectors say that they are currently experiencing difficulty filling vacancies.
The report explores what employers are planning to do to address the issue. Almost half (47%) of employers with hard-to-fill vacancies say they plan to upskill current staff. A quarter (26%) say they want to hire more apprentices, with the same percentage looking to hire an increased number of UK graduates.
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The full Summer 2018 Labour Market Outlook report can be found here
