The UK Job Market in 2026: What 70,000 Job Listings Tell Us About Who's Actually Hiring

By Marco · May 7, 2026 · 5 min read

If you are looking for a job in the UK right now, you have probably noticed: the market feels strange. LinkedIn is full of "open to work" banners. Headlines talk about layoffs. And yet, companies keep posting roles they say they cannot fill.

We wanted to cut through the noise with actual data. AlmostHired aggregates job listings from Reed, company career pages via Greenhouse and Lever, and other sources into a single searchable database. Right now, we have over 70,000 active UK listings.

Here is what the numbers actually show.

The Top 10 Most-Posted Job Titles in the UK

Forget the jobs that get the most media attention. Here are the roles that employers are actually posting the most:

1. Support Worker — 380 listings across 131 companies

2. Care Assistant — 310 listings across 116 companies

3. Assistant Manager — 297 listings across 151 companies

4. Sales Executive — 235 listings across 136 companies

5. General Manager — 234 listings across 174 companies

6. Business Development Manager — 221 listings across 183 companies

7. Project Manager — 217 listings across 190 companies

8. Operations Manager — 173 listings across 136 companies

9. Account Manager — 122 listings across 113 companies

10. Receptionist — 119 listings across 85 companies

Two things stand out. First, healthcare and care roles dominate the very top — reflecting structural shortages that have only worsened since Brexit reduced the EU care workforce pipeline. Second, management and business development roles are remarkably widespread. A Business Development Manager role appears across 183 different companies. This is not one sector — this is the entire UK economy looking for people who can grow revenue.

The Sectors: Where the Demand Actually Is

We categorized every UK listing by sector based on job title keywords. The results challenge some assumptions:

Management: 12,960 jobs — by far the largest category. Every business needs managers, and the UK has a lot of businesses.

Tech and Engineering: 6,897 jobs — strong but fragmented across dozens of specialized titles.

Healthcare: 4,022 jobs — concentrated in care roles, nursing, and allied health.

Sales: 2,654 jobs — underrated and wide open for candidates with commercial skills.

Finance and Accounting: 1,702 jobs — consistent demand for accountants, controllers, and finance managers.

Data and Analytics: 1,648 jobs — the fastest-growing non-tech category.

Education: 1,199 jobs — teaching assistants and lecturers lead.

Consulting: 1,031 jobs — from management consulting to IT advisory.

Marketing: 931 jobs — digital marketing roles dominate over traditional.

HR and Recruitment: 852 jobs — HR Advisor alone appears across 74 companies.

Legal: 724 jobs — solicitors, paralegals, and compliance roles.

Design: 545 jobs — UX, product design, and graphic design.

The "Hidden" White-Collar Market

Here is something the big job boards do not show you clearly: the white-collar mid-market is enormous. These are the roles between junior positions and C-suite — and they represent the bulk of professional hiring.

Finance Manager (103 listings across 90 companies). Marketing Manager (80 across 74). HR Advisor (87 across 74). Financial Controller (72 across 64). Senior Project Manager (64 across 52). These roles are not glamorous. They do not go viral on LinkedIn. But they represent stable, well-paying careers with high demand and — critically — less competition than the headline-grabbing tech roles everyone applies to.

A Financial Controller role across 64 different companies means 64 hiring managers who need someone right now. That is a strong negotiating position for anyone with the right experience.

The Company Diversity Signal

One of the most interesting patterns in our data is the ratio of listings to companies. When a role has many listings but few companies (like Retail Security Officer: 157 listings from just 5 companies), it is usually one or two large employers doing bulk hiring. The opportunity is real but concentrated.

When a role has many listings across many companies (like Project Manager: 217 listings from 190 companies), it signals genuine market-wide demand. Nearly every company posting that role is unique — which means more options, more negotiating power, and less risk of showing up to find 500 other applicants.

The highest company-diversity roles in our UK data: Business Development Manager (183 companies), Project Manager (190), General Manager (174), Assistant Manager (151), Sales Executive (136), Operations Manager (136), Account Manager (113). These are the roles where the UK job market is widest open.

What About Tech?

Tech is strong but nuanced. The "learn to code" narrative oversimplifies reality. In our data, .NET Developer has 64 listings but only from 5 companies — a few agencies dominating the market. Business Analyst has 64 listings across 59 companies — real distributed demand.

The tech roles with the broadest company diversity (and therefore the most genuine opportunities) are the ones that sit at the intersection of technology and business: Business Analyst, Data Analyst, Product Manager, Solutions Architect. Pure engineering roles remain strong but are often recruited through fewer, specialized channels.

If you are a developer, your options are good but concentrated. If you are a tech-adjacent professional — analyst, PM, consultant — your options are everywhere.

The Bottom Line

The UK job market in 2026 is not collapsing. It is shifting. Management, business development, finance, and data roles are where the broadest demand sits. Healthcare is desperate but structurally challenged. Tech is strong but fragmented. Sales is wide open for anyone willing to do the work.

The real problem is not a lack of jobs. It is that most job seekers are applying to roles they have no realistic chance of getting — because no one tells them their actual match probability until after they have waited three weeks for a rejection email.

That is the problem AlmostHired solves. Upload your CV, get matched against 70,000+ UK listings (plus 600,000+ across Europe), and see your match score before you apply. No more guessing. No more endless scrolling.

Try it free at almosthired.co