The post-pandemic recovery has lifted vacancies to a high of 1.27 million, at critical levels in hospitality and health—sectors impacted by the exodus of EU workers. We expect recruitment advertising for private sector roles to have risen 13% in 2022 to £746 million (noting base effects from lockdown in H1 2021), and will decline c.4% in 2023.

LinkedIn dominates recruitment advertising directed at professionals, leveraging its free global networking service. Indeed anchors the other end of the skills spectrum, which is low value and high volume, aggregating openings to create a scale proposition for jobseekers, using technology to target and match them with employers.

Specialists are surviving Indeed’s technology-driven business model by relying on human expertise and ancillary HR services to differentiate. Agencies continue to specialise in supplying workers to large employers for temporary positions. News publishers have retained a small but dwindling slice of recruitment advertising.

Car transactions are down for the third consecutive year and consumer demand is dramatically shifting (away from diesel and towards alternative fuels), but the marketing expenditure on used cars remains robust overall. Auto Trader has extended its leading position as the largest used car portal, so far shielded from the structural headwinds affecting its core customer group of dealerships. Several disruptors have entered the UK automotive space in the past couple of years, but none have gained real traction in the listings space, instead opting for ancillary approaches. Tech disruption will come, but much longer term.

Employment reached an all time high in 2019 of 32.8 million people at work despite slower GDP growth in 2017-19. The tighter labour market has helped real wage growth. A two-tier jobs market has emerged, with high-grade skilled roles evolving in a wide range of service sectors, and a large pool of low-grade, part-time work  

The heterogeneous labour market has ensured that in recruitment classifieds, unlike property and auto, no digital player has achieved absolute dominance. In the layer devoted to the recruitment of professionals, served by LinkedIn, rising demand for more specialised roles has expanded the number of agencies, intensive users of digital tools to locate recruits and crack the problem of "approachability" of those already in the job  

Online job portals are rushing to improve their AI and programmatic capabilities as specialisation prompts a shift from keyword search to smart matching, leading to a boom in recruitment tech M&A. Traditional agencies such as Hays are upgrading their own data capabilities through acquisitions and partnerships with LinkedIn, Google, Salesforce and other data/tech providers 
 

Expenditure on UK classifieds peaked in 2004, but has since almost halved to £1.95 billion in 2018. In every vertical, the print to digital transition of expenditure has favoured a first mover, leading to dominant positions that challengers find hard to disrupt.

The property market was stagnant in 2019, with stable house price growth but low transaction volumes as Brexit uncertainty held back sales. An expected cut in interest rates this year should contribute to a slight rise in transaction volumes.

The low tide of transactions has cemented the reign of Rightmove and condemned challengers to low traction. No. 2 player, Zoopla, plans for a major drive in 2020 after a 1.5-year investment spree by parent private equity firm Silver Lake Partners.