It Probably Isn’t You

If you have been applying for months and hearing very little back, it is worth knowing what you are actually up against. Not so you can feel worse about it — so you can stop assuming the problem is your CV.

The August data is now out, and it says plainly that this is one of the hardest markets to find work in for over a decade.

There are fewer jobs than at almost any point in ten years

The Office for National Statistics puts the number of open jobs across the UK at 707,000. That is down 2.8% on the year, the lowest in over five years, and — setting the pandemic aside — the lowest since late 2014.

The number of vacancies has now fallen every month for thirty-four months running. Nearly three years of the door narrowing, month after month.

So if it feels harder than the last time you looked for work, that is because it is. You are not imagining it and you are not doing it badly.

And more people are applying for each one

The number of people available for work rose again in August, at the fastest rate in three months. Recruiters put it down to redundancies, fewer opportunities around, and people leaving jobs they no longer feel secure in.

That is the bit that stings. Not only are there fewer roles — there are more of you going for each one. A role that drew forty applications two years ago might draw well over a hundred now.

Which is why sending more applications is usually the wrong response. If a hundred people apply and eighty are a rough fit, the shortlist is decided on who is an obvious fit. Ten carefully tailored applications will beat fifty rushed ones, every time, and it is not close.

If you are under 25, it is harder still — and that is not your fault

This is the part of the data that deserves more attention than it gets.

Unemployment among 18 to 24 year olds stands at 14.6%, close to its highest level in eleven and a half years, and it has risen steadily over the past twelve months.

Every other age group is at or near a multi-year low.

That gap is not about effort, attitude or talent. Employers have pulled back on entry-level and graduate hiring specifically, and that decision was made well above your head.

It does not make the search less exhausting. But if you are in that group and quietly concluding that something is wrong with you, the numbers say otherwise, and it is worth hearing that plainly. (We wrote about this in more detail — with practical steps — here.)

Where the roles actually are — and where they are not

Every month recruiters across the UK report which kinds of candidates are in short supply and which are in excess. That is effectively a map of where you face the least and most competition.

A few things worth taking from that.

If your skills are on the left, apply with confidence. Employers are struggling to fill these. You have more leverage than the general mood suggests, including on salary.

If they are on the right, you need to be sharper, not louder. It is not that nobody is hiring. It is that a generic application will be one of many. Specific beats broad.

One honest caveat. The report notes that the same skill can appear on both lists, because supply varies a lot by region. Treat this as a guide to the weather, not a forecast for your street.

If you are a manager or a director, this is the hard part

Business development, marketing, HR, project management, general management and director-level roles are all sitting on the excess-supply side. If you are senior and have been searching a while, that is why.

The pattern behind it is that employers are cutting layers and hiring people who deliver directly. Which means the thing that used to be your strongest card — the size of the team you ran, the breadth of what you oversaw — is doing less work for you than it did.

What is landing instead is evidence you can still do the job yourself. Numbers you personally hit. Things you built. Problems you fixed with your own hands, recently. If your CV leads on scope and oversight, try leading on outcomes and see what changes.

The genuinely good news, and it is real

In August, the number of people placed into permanent jobs across the UK rose for the first time in nearly four years.

It is one month, and it has not reached everywhere — hiring rose in London and the Midlands and fell in the South and North of England. But it is the first genuine turn since 2022.

Alongside it, the rate at which service-sector employers are cutting staff has slowed to its weakest in almost a year, and technology and IT services were the only part of the UK service economy where new work grew.

Starting salaries are rising too, at the fastest rate since January, because employers are competing hard for people with specific skills.

None of that makes this month easy. But if you have been waiting for the market to move, it has just moved for the first time in four years.

What I would actually do this month

Apply to fewer roles, properly. Ten tailored applications will outperform fifty copies of the same CV. In a crowded field, the obvious fit wins, and obvious fit is something you create by editing.

Read the shortage list again and be honest. Is there a version of you that sits closer to the left-hand column? Sometimes it is a genuine retrain. Often it is just describing what you already do in the language employers are searching for.

Consider temporary and contract work seriously. Short-term hiring has been growing for five months while permanent hiring has only just turned. It is often the faster route back in, and it is a great deal easier to get a permanent job from inside a business than from outside one.

Lead with what you did, not what you managed. Especially at senior level. Specific outcomes, recent, with numbers where you have them.

Pace yourself. Thirty-four months of falling vacancies is a long grind, and treating a hard market as a personal verdict is the quickest way to run out of energy before it turns. Fewer, better applications is also simply more sustainable than volume.