Dorset labour market & Skills insights - Quarter 1 | 2022

Latest insights into Dorset's labour market 

The latest labour market and economic indicators show that the economy grew by 0.8% in the first quarter of 2022  and is now above its pre-coronavirus level.

Employers’ confidence in the economy however took a downward turn as inflation reached its highest for 30 years and energy and commodity prices picked up further as the conflict in Ukraine escalated.

Yet, hiring intentions increased, particularly for permanent workers, perhaps reflecting challenges in filling vacancies.

In Dorset 2022 started with a new high of over 25,000 vacancies being posted online - levels unseen before. But there is scarcity on the labour market despite significantly lower employment levels than before the pandemic, rising numbers of people who aren’t working but also aren’t looking for a job and unemployment in Dorset overtaking the national levels for the first time on record.

Check out Quarter 1 Highlights - presentation 

Use the dashboard to explore the latest labour market developments. Should be read with the LMI during COVID-19 guidance.

Key Findings

  • 2022 started with a new high of over 25,000 vacancies being posted online - levels unseen before in Dorset.
  • The past two years (2020-21) of pandemic disruption resulted in fewer economically active people in Dorset, 2.4 pp decline in employment (vs 1 pp nationally) and unemployment rates doubling locally and exceeding national levels for the first time on record.  
  • The top employers league table has seen some reshuffle over the first quarter with hospitality and tourism firms taking over, while NHS firmly remains on top of the chart, as well as local authorities and educational providers. 

  • Vacancy growth continued in across sectors. Most notably, vacancies in tourism and hospitality grew 5 times in the first quarter on those seen over the same period last year, and were also twice as high in arts and entertainment, utilities and manufacturing.

  • All professional groups saw an uplift in demand over the first quarter, with hospitality, food and tourism jobs reaching their highest on record, where a 300% growth lifted them from the bottom in Q1 of last year to only being topped by healthcare in the first three months of 2022. Among the 2400 vacancies advertised were some 500 chefs, 500 kitchen and food service team members and 360 cleaners, illustrating the acute labour shortages faced by the hospitality sector in Dorset.The highest spike in demand across occupations was noted in elementary lower skilled jobs where demand was twice higher in 2022 than back in 2019.

  • Employers' most frequently requested skills were communication, customer service, management, sales, detail-orientation and marketing and personal attributes such as enthusiasm and self motivation. Many of these were less prevalent in candidate profiles than in job postings. The majority of digital skills were stable or growing with MS Office topping the lead table and Python growing amongst the programming languages.