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The Office for National Statistics published its latest labour market overview on 15 September, and the Recruitment and Employment Confederation responded the same morning. Interim Chief Executive Maxine Bligh opened with a line that will land with anyone who has been job hunting since the spring: "Jobseekers have been watching the same job market movie for a while now."
The numbers back her up. For May to July 2026 the employment rate held at 75.1%, unemployment edged up to 4.9%, and payrolled employees fell to 30.2 million, 101,000 down on the year. Vacancies for June to August came in at 702,000, a 1.1% quarterly fall. Regular pay grew 3.5%, or 0.6% in real terms.
Reading the REC's verdict
Bligh called this "a steady but unspectacular picture", but the more revealing part of her statement was the diagnosis: "falling payrolled employment suggests too much tentativeness remains in hiring decisions."
Tentativeness is not the same as absent demand, and the distinction matters. A market with no demand has empty pipelines. A tentative market has full pipelines and slow sign off, which is precisely what we see in live vacancies. Bligh made the point again when she asked for conditions that give firms "a chance to switch from resilience to risk". Resilience is a defensive posture. Employers in it protect headcount budgets rather than spend them, and roles sit approved but unfilled.
Her second observation was that "the temporary job market has at least stabilised, offering reassurance for those looking for immediate work". The REC and KPMG Report on Jobs supports this, with temporary billings rising for a fourth consecutive month and temp pay at a 26-month high. Permanent placements also stopped falling for the first time in 45 months. When permanent recruitment slows, the work still has to be delivered, so contract and interim resourcing moves first.
Third, she flagged that resilient pay growth "will be watched closely by pension policymakers and ahead of the Bank of England’s next interest rate decision". That matters beyond salary benchmarking, because the cost of borrowing feeds directly into whether capital programmes proceed on schedule.
Finally, the Budget. Bligh urged the government to "go bold with the Budget next month to rebuild employer confidence by supporting growth, boosting hiring and strengthening labour market participation", alongside "lessening the cost of doing business". The Autumn Budget falls on 28 October, and the REC’s position is that until that cost and certainty picture shifts, hiring decisions keep getting deferred.
Infrastructure is not moving at the national average
The national figures flatten out some large differences. Wholesale and retail shed 75,000 payrolled employees over the year, down 2.8%, with accommodation and food falling at the same rate. Administrative and support services, which includes agency and temporary staffing, rose 63,000 or 2.6%.
Construction went the other way on vacancies. ONS figures put construction vacancies at 34,000 in the second quarter of 2026, up from 30,000 a year earlier, while the economy-wide total fell.
The regulated programmes explain much of that. AMP8 commits £104bn of water investment across England and Wales between 2025 and 2030. RIIO-T3, Ofgem’s transmission price control, runs from April 2026 to March 2031. And on the same day the ONS published these figures, the Nuclear Industry Association confirmed UK nuclear employment has passed 100,000 for the first time, reaching 102,606, up 4,433 in a year and 67% in five, with Sizewell C headcount alone up 62.6% year on year and around 17,000 jobs expected at peak construction.
Not every corner of our patch is rising. Water supply, sewerage and waste recorded the steepest quarterly vacancy fall of any industry at 14.9%, though it is a small sector where numbers swing sharply and the AMP8 workload has yet to reach its peak.
What to do about it
If you are job hunting, expect a longer process rather than a worse outcome, and take contract work seriously while temp pay is at a two-year high. Ask your recruiter what your specific discipline and region is actually paying, because engineering pay frequently moves faster than the 3.5% economy-wide figure.
If you are hiring, candidate availability is still growing but at a five-month low. The window is narrowing, and speed of process is winning candidates more reliably than salary.
Carrington West is an engineer recruitment agency covering highways, town planning, rail, property and buildings, nuclear, water, transmission and distribution, and health and safety. Our engineering recruiters each work a single discipline, from our Portsmouth base and nationwide.
Browse the latest Carrington West jobs or speak to a specialist consultant about what your discipline is paying.
Sources
ONS Labour market overview, September 2026
REC response to ONS labour market figures, September 2026
KPMG and REC UK Report on Jobs, August 2026
ONS vacancies by industry (VACS02)