Wednesday 25 February 2009

Job Vacancies


I am unemployed. I was made redundant about three months ago, for the first month or so I was applying for as many jobs as possible, on loads of websites, and every week rifling through the database at the job centre, engineering jobs, media jobs, marketing, temp, admin, just anything really, but nothing came of it.

I had dozens of GCSEs, a few A-Levels, a degree, a decade of experience in the electronics manufacturing industry, in depth knowledge of London and Glasgow indie music scenes, and about 25 years worth of creating stuff on computers. None of these things seem to be helping me find work.

A few weeks ago, in Prime Minister's questions there were around 500,000 job vacancies in the UK, down from 600,000 he was quoting a few weeks earlier. I dunno where he gets his figures from, are they accurate, how much rounding is there, how up to date?

That was a fortnight ago.

I've been tracking the number of vacancies each day on Reed.co.uk, which I guess could cover a quarter of all vacancies in the UK.
Their total vacancies have fallen by about a 5% in the past ten days. In fact, it looks like the loss of jobs available is accelerating. Its getting harder and harder to find work, its getting a whole lot worse.

With a bit of extrapolation, from uncle Gordon's figure of 500,000 vacancies a few week's back, now we're on 450,000.

2 comments:

  1. wonder if there's a corresponding decrease in the number of jobseekers as all the vacancies get filled - unless the posts are being withdrawn in the first instance?

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  2. and meanwhile, someone's busy rearranging deckchairs at www.realhelpnow.gov.uk

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