Last year saw the recruitment industry go through major change as the impact of the “great resignation” hit the UK job market. A new report by payments provider takepayments however, could hint at signs the job market is beginning to settle.
The insights, from takepayments’ bi-annual research into UK industry spending analysed over 30,000 transactions, comparing spending YoY and against the last 6-month period. Of all industries, recruitment has seen the biggest decline in transactions.
The first half of 2022 saw a -30% change when compared to the same 6-month period in 2021. However, this has begun to steady as the decline was only -2% when comparing January-June 2022 against July-December 2021. Recruiters have seen a shift. McKinsey recently claimed that we are seeing “a fundamental mismatch between companies’ demand for talent and the number of workers willing to supply it.” People are reassessing what they want from their careers and a gap has been created in the market as more people switch jobs and industries, retire early and even start their own businesses.
Others are renegotiating rather than resigning, making their current job work better for their own individual needs. This combination of global uncertainty and improved life balance awareness is what has made the recruitment industry so turbulent in recent years and so it’s good to see the first signs of stability in this latest report.
Will thriving industries see more recruitment demand?
The research also indicates the travel industry is leading the way when it comes to increased consumer spending, where unsurprisingly spending is up by 37% year-on-year. Combined with VisitBritain’s predictions that inbound tourism spending is expected to increase by 59% to £6.9bn in 2021, these figures will be another welcome sign of growth for UK tourism and for those working in recruitment in the sector.
Hospitality challenges however still continue, where consumer spending has fallen 10% year-on-year and shows no sign of growth over the past six months either. The full transcaction trends are below, ranked by YoY increase or decrease in the number of transactions, January to July 2022.
Industries seeing the biggest growth in transactions YoY (January-June 2022 Vs. 2021)
| Industries | % change in transactions YoY | % change in transactions compared to the previous 6 months |
| Travel | 37 | 1 |
| Marketing | 20 | 9 |
| Water and utilities | 18 | 18 |
| Security | 13 | 4 |
| Real Estate | 12 | -7 |
| Nightclubs | 9 | -5 |
| CHarity | 9 | 1 |
| Taxi | 8 | -3 |
| Jewellery | 8 | 0 |
| Insurance | 7 | 5 |
| Education | 7 | 4 |
| Museum | 7 | 2 |
Industries seeing the biggest decline in transactions YoY (January-June 2022 Vs. 2021)
| Industries | % change in transactions YoY | % change in transactions compared to the previous 6 months |
| Recruitment | -30 | 2 |
| Hospitality | -10 | 0 |
| Storage | -7 | -6 |
| Veterinary services | -7 | -6 |
| Food, drink and dairy shops | -6 | -6 |
| Newsagents | -6 | -6 |
| Haulage | -6 | -6 |
| Wholesale | -5 | -4 |
| Arts and crafts | -5 | -3 |
| Subscriptions | -5 | 29 |
 https://www.takepayments.com/high-street-spending-report/
