Since the Brexit referendum, the number of EU workers actively seeking work in the UK has dropped by over 11 per cent according to jobs website Monster.co.uk.

Job seekers from outside the EU

At the same time, there has been an increase in job searches from non-EU countries, led by would-be employees from the US, India and the Philippines.The largest decrease in inquiries came from Romanians, whose numbers have fallen by 52 per cent since the 2016 vote. There have also been sizeable drops in job searches from people in Portugal, Poland, Spain and Greece.Among the economic sectors seeing the biggest fall in inquiries were IT, legal and finance, and engineering, although the largest drop of almost a quarter was recorded in the business/strategic management category.

Need for certain business skills increasing

However, decreased interest from job seekers in Europe was not universal: the data showed a small rise in interest from Germans and increases of about a fifth from people in Sweden and Finland.Among non-EU job searchers, there were increases in inquiries in various skills categories including medical, marketing and security.Monster also found the need for certain skills from UK businesses was increasing with the number of engineering jobs rising by 11 per cent, biotech/science by 18 per cent and customer support by 11 per cent.

Businesses unable to fill skilled roles

Sinead Bunting, European marketing vice-president at Monster, said, “While the proportion of international traffic from outside the EU has increased, a fall in active searches from EU countries in the wake of the referendum threatens to leave UK businesses unable to fill critical skilled roles. And things could get even more challenging.“While no one knows for sure what kind of deal the UK will get as it exits the EU, it seems certain we will end up with controlled movement of EU workers, further restricting the supply of labour against a background of rising vacancies and full employment. To counter this, successful companies must focus recruitment efforts on passive job seekers – those not actively looking. “In the past targeting passive job seekers at scale has been very difficult to do, and costly, our technology-driven digital first approach makes a massive difference. At Monster, we recently launched Power Job Ads app to target people within their everyday lives across Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, as well as lifestyle and news sites. We’re already seeing a conversion rate two to three times higher than traditional job ads.”

Biggest drops in searches from EU countries:

Romania -52.05%
Portugal -41.77%
Poland -34.59%
Spain -26.54%
Greece -25.46%
Belgium -21.37%
Slovakia -21.15%
Bulgaria -20.85%
France -20.58%
Slovenia -18.15%

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Read more about the big picture for business in the Winter issue of our magazine 

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