November 2023 market overview

Across the UK’s commerce and industry, financial services and professional services sectors, we’ve pulled together all the live vacancies we’ve had in November 2023 across London, Home Counties, West Midlands and South West England.

Typically, we see November offer a last burst of recruitment activity, as organisations look to get a candidate secured before the end of the year.

As 2023 has been very unpredictable,  we weren’t too sure whether that would happen this year. Still, encouragingly we have certainly seen a steady and even distribution of jobs come in across our professional services, financial services and commerce and industry sectors. Our professional services markets made up 30% of vacancies in November, financial services 34% and commerce and industry 36%.

51% of vacancies in professional services were in the legal sector

Drilling into specific markets, James Baker who heads up our professional services practice, says:

“Whilst the November market has followed the steady nature of much of 2023, there are clear indications from a number of our clients that they are planning to invest in talent and grow headcount from quarter two of 2024”.

This is a positive reflection and gives us confidence as we near the end of the year and head into 2024. The professional services markets continued to see strength across the legal sector, which brought in 51% of new vacancies, with other sectors in the industry taking a fairly even market share.

Over half of roles in financial services are in generalist HR

Our financial services practice has seen a much more varied spread. Investment banking, fintech and asset management all made up between 13-28% of vacancies, with the private equity, hedge funds and other areas of financial services hiring less this past month. The financial services sector has seen a high 56% of roles in the generalist space, with 20% coming in across payroll – a  considerably large volume. Ben Wood, Partner and lead of our financial services practice says:

“We continue to see promising signs and opportunities coming out of the SME boutique financial services area”. This is reflected in an uplift month on month of new vacancies.”

Commerce and industry hires are mainly at the GBP 51,000-99,000 level

Across commerce and industry, the volume of new vacancies has remained consistently strong, giving us optimism going into the end of the year and hopefully showing signs to come into the New Year. Again FMCG, retail and technology remained strong in November. We saw an increase across healthcare, engineering and pharmaceuticals which were quieter earlier this year.

The majority of salaries for the roles being recruited are between GBP 51,000-99,000 and Nick Croucher, Partner, feels that:

“the market across commerce and industry has remained stable over the last few months which we expect to see continue into early 2024.”

November has been a generally strong month considering the year we have seen. There are a lot of positive discussions in the market around hiring plans for 2024 which is excellent news for job seekers and employers alike.

If you are looking for opportunities across the UK or are looking to hire HR professionals of all levels and disciplines in your team, please get in touch using our form below.  

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