The UK employment rate stood at 75% in November 2023 to January 2024, while the unemployment rate was estimated at 3.9% for the same period.
That out-of-work figure is a little higher than predicted, according to the Office of National Statistics in its most recent labour market overview, but broadly in line with the previous quarter.
And according to recent data from jobs site Indeed, year-on-year, the number of job postings in the UK is down almost 27%. Job advertisements were at a high during 2021 and 2022, when tech companies aggressively hired to meet the demand and growth they experienced during the pandemic – writes Kirstie McDermott, Senior Content Manager, Amply.
Since then, of course, things have changed for the economy––and for jobs. Mass layoffs experienced from late 2022 have had a big impact on the hiring landscape. Companies including Monzo, Deliveroo Malwarebytes, T-Mobile, and Salesforce have all let UK workers go.
And where Gartner data from 2023 found that more than a third of job hunters had received four or more offers during their last job search, things look a bit different in 2024’s hiring market
Job hunting is changing
Companies still need great talent and those with the right capabilities remain in demand. Alongside sought-after technical know-how across areas like cybersecurity, Python programming and data science, those with well-developed soft skills are increasingly important, according to the World Economic Forum.
It has identified analytical thinking and innovation, complex problem-solving, critical thinking and analysis, creativity, originality and initiative, and reasoning and ideation as the skills of the future.
These uniquely human skills matter more than ever thanks to the advent and adoption of generative AI platforms, and developing them can give you a leg up in a job hunt.
Additionally, it’s also important to develop new hard technical skills. As companies cotton onto the abilities of gen AI, they’re replacing jobs with bots.
Klarna’s OpenAI chatbot integration for customer service is doing the work of 700 live agents, while Dukaan, an ecommerce platform that enables merchants to set up a shopfront using a smartphone, replaced 90% of its customer service staff in July of 2023.
Language learning app Duolingo, said in January that it planned to get rid of 10% of its contractors, using AI to translate content instead. And as far back as 2020, MSN made more than 50 journalists redundant, replacing them with AI software.
If you want to get ahead of the competition, and are in the market for a new job this year then the Payments, Cards and Mobile Job Board is a great starting point. It contains thousands of roles across the UK tech ecosystem, like the three below.
Engineering Manager – Consumer, Coinbase, Remote
Coinbase is looking for an experienced Engineering Manager to join its consumer product team.
The engineers within the consumer product group strive to make the Coinbase retail app the easiest-to-use and fastest experience for accessing the crypto and its suite of products include the Coinbase app, advance trade and staking.
You will need at least seven years’ of experience in software engineering, at least two years’ of engineering management experience, and will possess a strong understanding of what constitutes high-quality code and effective software engineering processes, creating an environment that fosters these principles. Apply now.
Senior Backend Engineer – Consumer, SumUp, London
As a Senior Backend Engineer (Golang) at SumUp, you will be responsible for optimising backend performance for transaction processing, implementing robust security measures, designing scalable architectures, creating user-friendly APIs with clear documentation, and emphasising code quality through unit testing.
You’ll need solid backend experience in Golang, strong experience in software architecture and application design, with a track record of making architectural decisions and a deep understanding of fundamental system architecture and API design (RESTful and event-driven services), as well as a level of comfort with SQL and NoSQL databases. See more information on this job.
Senior PHP Developer, Street Group, Manchester
Street Group, one of the fastest-growing PropTech companies in the UK, is seeking a Senior PHP Developer in Manchester. Here you’ll work as part of a small cross-functional team, alongside designers, product owners and engineers to identify, prioritise and solve problems iteratively.
You’ll be an experienced software developer with strong commercial experience in both PHP and Laravel, as well as experience with Vue. You should also have experience with cloud computing services (AWS and/or GCP) to be considered. See the full job description here.
For more great opportunities in fintech, visit the Payments, Cards and Mobile Job Board today.
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