Tech and science roles see drop in job vacancies, manufacturing sees rise

Manufacturing labourers recorded the largest increase in job vacancy rates in the EU between 2019 and 2023, according to Eurostat, signalling growing recruitment difficulties in that occupation.

The figures, which compare developments before the Covid-19 pandemic in 2019 with figures for 2023, indicate that the job vacancy rate for manufacturing labourers rose by 4.2 percentage points over the period.

The next largest increases were observed among sales, marketing and development managers, whose vacancy rate climbed by 3.0 percentage points, followed by other sales workers at 2.8 percentage points, transport and storage labourers at 2.5 percentage points and other clerical support workers at 2.4 percentage points.

In contrast, the biggest declines in job vacancy rates were recorded for life science technicians and associate professionals, whose rate fell by 2.6 percentage points.

They were followed by database and network professionals with a decline of 1.7 percentage points, software and applications developers and analysts with a drop of 1.5 percentage points, hotel and restaurant managers at 1.1 percentage points and handicraft workers at 1.0 percentage point.

According to the data, these declines likely indicate fewer difficulties in recruiting staff for those occupations.

Eurostat cautioned that a falling job vacancy rate does not necessarily mean that an occupation is shrinking, nor does a rising rate automatically imply expansion.

In the case of database and network professionals, although the vacancy rate decreased by 1.7 percentage points to 5.1 per cent in 2023, it remained well above the EU average job vacancy rate of 2.4 per cent across all occupations.

At the same time, the share of employees in this occupation increased by 0.2 percentage points between 2019 and 2023.

A similar pattern was observed for software and applications developers and analysts, whose vacancy rate declined to 6.9 per cent in 2023, while their share of employees increased by 0.5 percentage points over the same period.

By contrast, some occupations that experienced rising job vacancy rates recorded a decline in their share of employees.

Transport and storage labourers saw their employment share fall by 0.2 percentage points between 2019 and 2023 despite an increase in vacancy rates, while other sales workers recorded a drop of 0.1 percentage point in their share of employees over the same period.

The findings, drawn from a novel dataset compiled from online job advertisements, provide additional insight into shifting labour market pressures across occupations in the years following the pandemic.

They highlight how changes in vacancy rates can reflect recruitment challenges rather than simple growth or contraction in employment levels, underlining the complexity of labour market dynamics across the European Union.