Healthcare staff shortages fuelling near-record job vacancies across UK economy

theguardian.com:

Shortages of healthcare workers are fuelling near-record numbers of job vacancies across the UK economy, with the lack of nurses, carers and other staff serving as the biggest recruitment challenge in almost every local authority area.

According to analysis by the Office for National Statistics, more than one in 10 job vacancies posted online in December were in healthcare – more than any sector across the economy.

Highlighting the pressures on the NHS and social care across the country, the government statistics agency said healthcare was the job category with the highest share of adverts in almost 90% of local authorities in the UK.

The figures came as Rishi Sunak’s government faces increased pressure over its refusal to offer a bigger pay rise to NHS workers, with the prospect of continuing strike action in the increasingly bitter dispute over pay and staff shortages.

According to the ONS, there were almost 1.5m estimated open job adverts as a daily average during December. Using data from the jobs search engine Textkernel, it said healthcare accounted for almost 190,000, or 12.7%, the largest of any sector.

Healthcare also accounted for the two occupations with the largest number of job adverts nationwide, with 31,870 adverts for support workers and 21,170 for nurses.

The second largest share of job vacancies in December was in information and communication technology professions, driven by recruitment adverts for software engineers, with almost 16,000.

IT jobs contributed to the largest share of vacancies in about 8% of local authorities, and were concentrated in London. Meanwhile, production and warehouse management jobs held the biggest share in almost 2% of local authorities, with the greatest demand within the “golden