Job vacancies across the UK dropped by 31,000 between March and May 2026 compared with the same period last year, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported on 19 June. That is a fall of 4.2%.

The decline fits a pattern. For several months now, the number of job openings has been falling each quarter. We have now reached a point where vacancies are 10.6% below where they were before the pandemic — a level many thought would take much longer to arrive, given how hard it was for employers to fill roles between 2021 and 2022.

The trend has been steady through the first half of 2026. In January, there were 711,000 vacancies. By February to April, that had fallen to around 705,000 — the lowest level for five years. May's figures showed vacancies were 54,000 lower than a year before, pushing the gap below pre-pandemic levels even wider.

Looking back further shows how much has shifted. Between autumn 2024 and February 2026, the ONS recorded a total drop of 73,000 vacancies — a fall of 9.2%. During that period, 14 out of 18 major industries were shedding vacancies.

The latest figures offer a potential sign of change in that picture. In March to May 2026, vacancies fell in 10 of those 18 industries rather than 14. Whether this means the worst is over, or whether it is just normal fluctuation, will become clearer when the rest of 2026's figures arrive.

What happens in different sectors matters here. When vacancies drop across just 10 industries instead of 14, it still means employers want fewer staff overall. But it may show that the sharpest cuts have already happened in sectors like retail, hospitality, and professional services — the areas that moved fastest. Some sectors are still hiring, and tracking those may reveal whether there are real skill shortages or particular sectors with genuine hiring needs that the overall numbers can hide.

The political dimension cannot be ignored. In April 2026, employers faced an increase in their National Insurance contributions — taxes paid for each employee — which was set out in the October 2024 Budget. Employers have said this has made them more cautious about hiring. The vacancy figures alone cannot separate that effect from the broader slowdown in hiring across the economy or the global uncertainty affecting business confidence through the first half of 2026. What we can see is that vacancies have kept falling even after April, so the question about this policy remains live.

For those watching the Bank of England's decisions on interest rates, the falling number of job openings matters to how the bank thinks about wage growth. When job vacancies are scarce compared with the number of people out of work, that makes it harder for wages to rise faster than inflation, which the bank aims to keep at 2%. Wage data itself will be more important to that judgment, but the vacancy figures are part of the picture.

The next employment figures will come out in the same June release cycle. The big question now is not whether the job market is cooling — the data show it is — but how quickly it will cool, and which sectors will be hit hardest. Vacancies are a leading indicator: they move before other employment figures do. Over the next few months, we will get clearer answers to those questions.