UK companies are becoming less forthcoming about what they’re willing to pay to fill open roles, indicating that employers are no longer under pressure to boost wages in a weakening labour market.
Advertisement
Only 56 per cent of online job postings included wage information in August, data from the employment site Indeed showed. That is a decline of almost 10 percentage points since the start of this year and the lowest share since early 2022, when more employers started advertising salaries in the post-pandemic race for talent.
“Some hiring managers are being reigned in a bit whenever they get into negotiations around recruiting people just because of the broader context where organisations might be having to think about redundancies or hiring freezes,” said David Lorimer, partner and specialist in pay transparency at Lewis Silkin.
The figures provide some early signs that wage pressures are starting to ease. So far, pay growth has remained too hot for the Bank of England’s comfort and policymakers are divided over when to deliver the next rate cut.
The UK jobs market has been reeling from a £26 billion (US$34.8 billion) increase in payroll costs and higher minimum wage requirements pushed through by Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves. Those policy shifts have been blamed for costing the economy thousands of jobs and eroding living standards.
Adzuna figures published on Monday showed that vacancies fell 1.3 per cent year on year in August, marking the first annual decline since February. Filling a role now takes about 37.3 days, almost a day longer than the previous month.