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The Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) has published its latest Labour Market Tracker, and the headline figure is a positive one: the UK jobs market is meaningfully larger than it was a year ago.
According to the tracker, there were just under 1.67 million active job postings in the UK in July, up 7.7% on the same month last year. Both active and new postings dipped slightly compared with June, but the year-on-year trend is what matters, and it points firmly upwards.
Significantly for our clients, the REC's Chief Membership and Innovation Officer, Maxine Bligh, named construction as one of the sectors where there are undoubtedly more opportunities now than there were a year ago.
Construction being explicitly identified as a sector on the up is a signal built environment employers shouldn't ignore. In our view, a vacancy market that is 7.7% larger than twelve months ago means one thing: greater competition for the technical talent you want to hire. The professionals on your shortlist are increasingly likely to have other options in front of them.
The month-on-month dip in July shouldn't distract from that. What matters for workforce planning is the underlying direction of travel with the REC's data showing a market that has been expanding for a full year.
The REC also flags that entry-level roles have not bounced back to the same degree, with Bligh noting it is "not totally straightforward" for young people to earn wages just yet. For built environment employers, we'd suggest this is one to watch: a softer early-careers market today has implications for the talent pipeline the industry will be relying on in years to come. Organisations that keep investing in junior and graduate hiring now will be the ones with resilient teams further down the line.
Source: REC Labour Market Tracker press release, August 2026.