The economic situation has worsened since our post on ‘redundancy’ searches in June, and unfortunately this is having a negative impact on job security. Consequently UK Internet searches for ‘redundancy’ have increased by 83% since August, reaching their highest peak over the past year in October. Over the 12 weeks ending 21st June we highlighted that UK internet users had searched for over 2,500 distinct terms containing the word ‘redundancy’. For the most recent 12 weeks, ending 8th November, that figure has increased to over 4,500.

Unemployment related searches such as ‘unemployment benefits’ and ‘job seekers allowance’ follow a similar trend to redundancy searches, peaking in June but then declining until August when searches began to increase again. Since the week ending August 16th, searches for ‘unemployment benefit’ have doubled and searches for ‘job seekers allowance’ have increased by 33%.
Over half the people searching for ‘redundancy’ (63.8%), ‘job seekers allowance’ (56.7%) and ‘unemployment benefit’ (55.1%) currently visit the government site Directgov. The five most popular employment search terms driving traffic to Directgov over the 4 weeks ending 8th November were ‘worktrain’, ‘job seekers allowance’, ‘income support’, redundancy’ and ‘job seekers allowance’. Worktrain is an online service from Jobcentre Plus that provides online job search, as well as information on jobs, careers and training.
Within our Employment and Training category, Jobcentre Plus and Reed.co.uk are currently the two most visited properties. Both sites are growing: Jobcentre Plus has experienced a 14% increase in traffic over the last year, while visits to Reed.co.uk have gone up by an even faster at 65%.

The differing growth rates of the two top job sites is a reflection of the different type of jobseeker that they attract. The economic downturn has hit the services sector particularly hard. The has caused an increase in the number of unemployed white collar workers, who are more likely to use a professional employment website like Reed over Jobcentre Plus, which is run by the government.
The majority of traffic to the Jobcentre Plus site comes from the Experian Mosaic group ‘Ties of Community’, which includes a large number of blue collar workers. On the other hand, Reed attracts a much broader audience. This includes significantly more traffic from ‘Symbols of Success’ – defined as “successful professionals with high incomes living in sought after areas” – then Jobcentre Plus.

As the chart above illustrates, searches for ‘christmas jobs’ have also doubled since this time last year. The top 10 searches including the term ‘christmas jobs’ reveal that the Post Office is the most sought after Christmas job employer, followed by Argos and then Marks and Spencer.
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