Britain’s labour market is showing further signs of strain, with new data pointing to a sustained slowdown in hiring and a particularly sharp squeeze on opportunities for young people entering the workforce.
Fresh figures from job site Indeed suggest overall vacancies remain firmly subdued, with UK job postings down 10.6 per cent on 2025 levels.
Compared with pre-pandemic norms, the picture is starker still: postings are now 29 per cent below their February 2020 baseline.
The deterioration comes alongside official statistics showing a broader softening in employment conditions, with vacancies falling to a five-year low, payrolled employment slipping and unemployment edging higher.
But it is the outlook for younger workers that is prompting particular concern.
One of the most worrying trends is the collapse in so-called “summer jobs” — traditionally a key entry point for school leavers and students seeking early work experience.
According to Indeed, summer job postings in 2026 are down 31 per cent compared with a year earlier, extending a persistent downward trend since 2023. In total, summer listings are now 71 per cent below their peak three years ago.
Economists warn that such roles are often the first step onto the employment ladder, providing young people with vital experience before progressing into permanent work.
Instead, that rung appears to be thinning out.
The Milburn Review has already highlighted rising concern over youth unemployment, with the proportion of young people not in education, employment or training reaching its highest level in more than a decade.
Beyond the headline decline, the composition of available summer work is also shifting in ways that may reshape early-career pathways.
Roles traditionally linked to education and youth work have seen notable declines in their share of summer postings. School teaching roles are down 2.7 percentage points in the seasonal mix, while sports coaching has fallen by 1.8 points. Camp leaders, day teachers and football coaching roles have also all slipped.
Some of this decline is understood to reflect reduced demand from residential summer schools and structured holiday programmes, which typically rely heavily on temporary staffing.
At the same time, hospitality and service-sector roles are taking a larger share of the shrinking pool of opportunities.
Chefs, baristas, team members, sales assistants and hospitality supervisors are all accounting for a greater proportion of summer vacancies than a year ago. Harvesting and seasonal manual roles have also edged higher in the mix.
The weakness in youth hiring sits within a broader cooling of the UK jobs market.
Indeed’s data suggests recruitment appetite has softened across multiple sectors, reflecting ongoing caution among employers facing higher costs, weak productivity growth and uncertain demand.
With vacancies falling and unemployment rising, analysts say the labour market is moving away from the tight conditions seen in the post-pandemic rebound period.
For policymakers, the shift raises awkward questions about the resilience of entry-level employment at a time when long-term youth inactivity is already under scrutiny.
While labour market downturns often begin with temporary or entry-level roles, economists caution that sustained weakness in this segment can have lasting consequences — particularly if young people miss out on early experience that shapes long-term earning potential.
For now, the data points in one direction: fewer opportunities, fiercer competition, and a labour market that is quietly but steadily losing momentum.
Jack Kennedy, Senior Economist at Indeed Hiring Lab, said: “The challenges facing young people in the labour market highlighted by the Milburn report have only intensified recently. Employers are navigating a difficult environment and they’re responding by pulling back on junior hiring in particular. This makes it harder for younger workers to get that crucial first foot on the career ladder.
Additionally, the slow start to the summer hiring season suggests employers are cautious about adding seasonal headcount, an unwelcome development given how much summer employment matters to particular groups of workers. For the youngest jobseekers, a first summer job is often more than a source of income – it’s an introduction to the world of work and can help build foundational skills.
The government’s commitment to 300,000 new work experience and training placements is a welcome recognition of the experience gap holding many young people back. The key test will be whether these placements are aligned with employer demand and provide a credible route into sustained work.
What’s needed is a genuinely joined-up response across education, industry and government – one that prioritises early career support and real-world experience at precisely the moment market forces are working against it. The risk is stark: a tough jobs market today becomes a permanent setback for the generation entering the workforce tomorrow.”
Methodology
Data on seasonally adjusted Indeed job postings is an index of the number of seasonally adjusted job postings on a given day, using a seven-day trailing average. Feb. 1, 2020, is our pre-pandemic baseline, so the index is set to 100 on that day.
To calculate the average rate of wage growth, we follow an approach similar to the Atlanta Fed US Wage Growth Tracker, but we track jobs, not individuals. We begin by calculating the median posted wage for each country, month, job title, region and salary type (hourly, monthly or annual). Within each country, we then calculate year-on-year wage growth for each job title-region-salary type combination, generating a monthly distribution. Our monthly measure of wage growth for the country is the median of that distribution.
We track summer hiring appetite by tallying UK job postings on Indeed that include the term “summer” in the job title, excluding postings whose titles also reference internships, work placements, apprenticeships or graduate programmes (e.g. “intern”, “internship”, “placement”, “apprentice”, “graduate”).
We track internship postings separately, tallying postings whose job titles contain “intern” or “internship”. This method doesn’t capture the full extent of seasonal demand but provides a gauge of recent trends and how summer postings compare to prior years. All posting data presented reflects 7-day trailing moving averages.
The number of job postings on Indeed.com, whether related to paid or unpaid job solicitations, is not indicative of potential revenue or earnings of Indeed, which comprises a significant percentage of the HR Technology segment of its parent company, Recruit Holdings Co., Ltd.
Job posting numbers are provided for information purposes only and should not be viewed as an indicator of performance of Indeed or Recruit. Please refer to the Recruit Holdings investor relations website and regulatory filings in Japan for more detailed information on revenue generation by Recruit’s HR Technology segment.
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