7.4% drop in HGV driver job adverts over the last week
The number of job adverts for HGV drivers fell by 7.4% last week, making it the second biggest drop on the figures from the recruitment and employment confederation (REC) behind dental nurses.
Their new jobs recovery tracker, which is designed to spot signs of labour market growth through the use of jobs posting data, showed that there were a total of 2,264 unique job postings for HGV drivers, which is down by 7.4% compared to the previous week (dental nurses was 7.9%).
The data also found that all areas of the UK saw a continued decline in advertised roles between 4th - 10th May and 11th - 17th May, with the exception of the North East, where postings increased by 0.8%.
This follows on from the projections announced by Driver Require earlier this month which states that employment levels in transport and storage will be down by 15% by the end of the year and won’t fully recover until mid-2026.
Their analysis into the impact of COVID-19 suggests that employment growth rates in the sector face a bleaker than average outcome, with a 35% reduction, compared to the estimated 25% drop in all sectors during the lockdown. The same period is likely to see HGV driver employment plummet by 50%.
The REC figures also found that in February there were a total of 1.86 million unique job postings in the UK, but this figure fell by 28% to 1.34 million in April.
Neil Carberry, the chief executive of REC said ““While there has been a huge slowdown, this job posting data shows that the picture isn’t uniform in all parts of the country and for all types of occupations. Health and social care workers being in high demand isn’t a surprise, but as more workplaces start to re-open, we are likely to see similar trends emerging for other roles. The increase in job adverts for cleaners and security guards could be the first sign of this.”
It will be interesting to see how the transition out of lockdown and scale of recovery reshapes the haulage sector over the coming years.
