The skills shortages report: Which industries are struggling to bridge the gap?

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses across the UK have been struggling to fill vacancies due to a lack of skilled workers. In fact, an ONS survey revealed that businesses experiencing a shortage of workers reached an all-time high of 16.8% in August 2022.

As businesses continue to evolve, many have become increasingly digitalised, whether it’s through streamlining processes using business management software or implementing new ways of working. But which industries are being hit the hardest when it comes to skill shortages?

To find out which sectors are facing the worst shortages, ECI Software Solutions has looked at 20 industries across the UK and identified five different job positions for each.

Using LinkedIn, we research how many jobs are currently available for those positions, before comparing the figures to the number of people searching this month on Google in the UK for the specific roles.

We then created a score of the number of roles likely to be filled in each industry, to reveal which sectors are most likely to struggle to hire the right candidates this year due to lack of demand.

The Skills Shortages report: The top 10 industries with the biggest challenges to recruit

Insurance is one of the sectors facing the most difficulty to fill vacancies right now. There were over 46,000 roles for the likes of risk surveyor, insurance sales representative, insurance technician, insurance broker and claims clerk, but only a 1.22% likelihood of those positions being taken by people searching on Google for the relevant jobs.

This suggests that insurance companies may find it more difficult than any other sector to recruit, especially when it comes to filling those particular roles.

Following closely behind was eCommerce, with over 35,000 positions available from eCommerce manager, head of eCommerce to eCommerce assistant - on average only 620 people are searching for those positions each month.

Post-pandemic, consumers have become less inclined to shop in-store, and as a result, the eCommerce sector has boomed. However, this rapid growth may mean that there aren’t enough people equipped to carry out the more skilled roles within the sector.

Transport and retail are also facing issues in hiring talent. Roles such as transport coordinator have 7,770 current open positions but only 210 searches each month. Similarly, the job ‘retail team leader’ has over 23,000 vacancies in the UK, but on average 50 searches per month for this role - but this search volume may differ on other large employment websites such as Indeed.

With tech becoming the fastest growing industry in the UK, companies hiring for vacancies such as UX designer, cloud engineer, data scientist, software developer and IT manager are struggling to find people to take these positions. With 118,211 job openings, there is only a 5.75% likelihood that those positions will be filled, which is surprising with how quickly this industry is growing.

Talent pools may also be limited in certain areas across the UK, alongside specific industries, which could mean hiring managers are limited geographically, depending on if they require people to work in the office, on a hybrid model, or remotely.

Construction and wholesalers are both also seeing regular interest in job vacancies - but it's only marginal. Labour shortages are a big challenge as 25% of construction businesses in the UK are affected according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). However, this doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon with only 11% of jobs seeing a current demand.

The top 10 industries likely to hire the fastest

The property sector is the top industry for supply vs demand when it comes to jobs. On average each month, 13,560 people are searching for roles such as mortgage advisor, property manager, estate agent, surveyor and property developer, with a 60% demand for the current positions on offer.

Tourism and healthcare make up the top three. The healthcare sector in particular has 77,405 jobs open for care assistant, nurse, pharmacist, healthcare assistant and manager roles, with almost a third of this pool having active interest by jobseekers. Similarly, the hospitality industry is still recovering but with a demand of 47.34%, those roles may be occupied faster compared to the rest.

Business administration, telecommunications and agriculture are on the lower end of the scale. With over 132,000 open positions within business administration such as office manager, business accountant and more - on average only 2000 people are looking for employment within these areas.

With the cost of living crisis, businesses are facing higher supply costs, an increase in bills and as more products and services digitalise, growth prospects are becoming dependent on a sufficiently trained and tech-competent workforce.

To create more opportunities for growth, businesses should invest in training programmes or apprenticeships that can help to increase the chances of multiplying the workforce. And as the company scales up, implementing a business management software system can help you to become more streamlined and save time on manual processes.

Methodology

ECI Software Solutions used data from LinkedIn to discover the number of vacancies for 5 different roles across the top 20 industries in the UK.

ECI Software Solutions then compared this with data from Google Keyword Planner to discover how many people in each city were searching for sector-specific jobs on average within the last year.

Data is correct as of March 2023.