JOB TRENDS UNITED KINGDOM

“The UK labour market is expected to change dramatically over the next ten years - this is one of the key messages from a new report, Working Futures: new projections of occupational employment by sector and region, 2002-2012, Vol 1, from the Institute for Employment Research at the University of Warwick [1]. The projections, known to be "the most detailed and extensive ever produced for the UK", give an indication of general trends in the changing employment patterns in the UK between 2002 and 2012 and their implications for skill requirements. An overview regarding job trends from the report is given below.

Occupational projections
[In the UK] the impact of IT and the decline in manufacturing have contributed to a reduced demand for clerical and blue-collar manual jobs in recent years. This trend is expected to continue. The study also predicted that over the period 2002-2012:

• There will be significant increases in managers and senior officials, professional occupations, associate professional and technical occupations, and personal service occupations.
  
  
• For professional occupations, the highest rate of growth is projected for business and public service professionals [which include legal, business and statistical, public service professionals, architects, town planners, surveyors, librarians and related professionals]
  
  
• Substantial increases are also predicted for teaching and research, and science and technology professionals (including engineers), with around 200,000-300,000 jobs forecast in each case.
  
  
• For associate professional and technical occupations, the fastest rates of growth are expected for the culture/media/sports occupations. In terms of absolute numbers however, the largest rise is predicted for the business and public service group [which includes: transport, legal, business and finance, sales and related, conservation and public service and other associate professionals.
  
  

Replacement demands
Apart from projecting the number of additional jobs in the next decade, the study also looked at the number of jobs arising due to replacement demands. The importance of replacement demands is emphasised strongly in the report, as it "may often be far more significant than any change which results from growth in employment in an occupational group. Such replacement demand can also easily outweigh any negative changes resulting from projected employment decline."

The study has indeed projected that for all occupations together, replacement demand will be ten times higher than expansion demand over the forecast period. Whilst 1.3 million additional jobs due to expansion demand have been predicted, replacement demands arising from retirement and mortality are forecast to create over 12 million job openings, resulting in a 'net requirement' (defined as the sum of expansion and replacement demands) of 13.5 million jobs over the decade. In fact, replacement demand is so great that job opportunities are expected in all occupations. These include administrative and clerical, and skilled trades and elementary occupations, where large replacement demands are expected to more than compensate for the negative employment growth predicted in these areas. The top five occupations with the highest net requirement over the period 2002-2012 are shown in Table 2.”

Table 2. Top five occupations with the highest net requirement (excluding occupational mobility)

Source: Working Futures: new projections of occupational employment by sector and region, 2002-2012

The key message of this finding is that even in occupational areas where outlook is initially thought to be pessimistic, there may still be good employment opportunities. There are thus implications on education and training needs in order to support existing operations. In fact, according to the latest National Employers Skills Survey from the Learning and Skills Council, recruitment problems are found to be particularly high in skilled trades occupations - areas where the Working Futures report has projected positive net requirements despite negative expansion demands.”

Source: Prospects - Careers Service Desk website address: http://www.prospects.ac.uk/cms/ShowPage/Home_page/Labour_market_information/Graduate_Market_Trends/Working_futures__Spring_04_/p!eFjgmlX

GRADUATES IN THE UK

Source: the UK’s Official Graduate Careers website: http://www.prospects.ac.uk/cms/ShowPage/Home_page/What_do_graduates_do__2004/The_graduate_labour_market/p!eLbdfF

“In the UK, recent research suggests that the fastest growing sectors in 2004 would be Information Technology (with 5.3% annual jobs growth); Advertising (4.1%) and Law (3.3%).

It is anticipated that there could be a shortage of skilled candidates in the UK for: Finance, Legal and Information Technology jobs in the next few years, as fewer graduates may undertake professional training courses which will lead to a number of sectors facing skills shortages as a result.

In the UK, finance & business services and manufacturing, the two major employment sectors of graduates, have seen vacancies decreasing over the year.

In the UK, Civil Engineering and Building graduates represent some of the lowest unemployment and highest employment rates, reflecting the buoyancy in the construction sector.

In contrast, Information Technology, which shows the highest unemployment rate at 14.6%, reflects the slowdown of the IT market, which began over two years ago.

Table 1 also shows that HND diplomates had the highest rate of further study, as many of them went on to do a first degree. Similarly, Law had low unemployment due to the high percentage who undertook further study, typically for professional law qualifications.”

Table 1: Top ten subject areas covered in What Do Graduates Do? by highest rates of employment and further study, and lowest unemployment rate

Highest Employment (%)		Lowest Unemployment (%)		Further study (%)
Civil engineering	78.6	Law	3.8	HND	64.6
Accountancy	76.3	HND	3.9	Law	55.6
Business & management studies	76.1	Civil engineering	4.4	Chemistry	42.6
Media studies	73.6	Building	4.5	Physics	39.6
Building	73.2	Chemistry	6.0	History	29.4
Design studies	70.9	Geography	6.0	English	29.3
Drama	70.7	Psychology	6.1	Maths	28.5
Sociology	68.9	English	6.4	Biology	26.5
Mechanical engineering	68.0	Accountancy	6.6	Modern languages	23.5
IT	66.3	Business & management studies	6.7	Geography	22.8