With more sectors beginning to exit lockdown during June, we continued to see improvements, albeit small, in some of the indicators that we monitor.

 

The analysis of Swindon and Wiltshire job postings, using Labour Insights data, showed improvements for the third consecutive month, after the substantial decline in April 2020.  Local apprenticeship vacancies also saw slight but important increases in June.  The number of job postings, however, were still considerably around 1/3 behind the volumes advertised at the same time last year.  Apprenticeship vacancies have been affected even more, with a decline of c. 80% between June 2019 and June 2020.

 

Locally, several occupations started to see improvements in June 2020, however, after two months of no activity.  These included new job postings for plumbers, painters, fundraising / development specialists, waiters / waitresses, restaurant / food service managers, marketing coordinator / assistants, health and safety engineers & manufacturing engineers and data entry clerks. 

 

A number of occupation vacancies remain at significantly depressed levels, including customer service representatives and office / administrative assistance.  The decline in June 2020 compared to June 2019, however, was less sharp than for May 2020 compared to May 2019.

 

As in previous months, not all occupations have been declining when compared to the same month last year.  In fact, several occupations in Swindon and Wiltshire, broadly in line with the national trends, continue to sustain higher vacancy volumes that at the same time last year.  In June, the highest year-on-year increases were for caregivers / personal care aids, care assistants and registered nurse job postings.

 

By location, Swindon vacancies saw a slightly greater decline than Wiltshire’s during April and May 2020 compared to the same months in 2019.  Also, Swindon saw a greater decline in vacancies than any other town in the SWLEP area.  This is in part driven by the sector mix in Swindon, with the fastest declining industries, including Accommodation and Food, Wholesale and Retail, Information and Communication, and Financial and Insurance Services, accounting for nearly 30% of all postings, compared to only 22% for Wiltshire.  In contrast, several towns recorded higher vacancy figures in June 2020 than in June 2019, including Corsham, Warminster and Melksham.

 

In terms of industries, Human Health and Social Work Activities recorded highest increases in Swindon and Wiltshire, whilst Accommodation and Food Service Activities, closely followed by Wholesale and Retail, saw greatest declines when we compared June 2020 with the same month in 2019.

 

As well as the monitoring of the online job postings – which only provide a partial view of the labour market, but offer up-to-date information, that we can break down by town, occupation or industry – to provide a fuller picture, we also monitor a number of government data sources that provide monthly updates, showing local shifts.  These include Claimant Counts, Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) and Self-Employment Income Support Scheme (SEISS) statistics.

 

Claimants in Swindon and Wiltshire also remained substantially higher in June 2020 compared to the pre-lockdown levels, with 2% residents aged 16-64 claiming benefits in March 2020, compared to 4.7% in June 2020.  However, the local rate of increase has been slightly slower than for the country as a whole, with a 2.7% difference between June and March in SWLEP against a national difference of 3.4% between the same months.  

 

Examination of the furlough scheme figures for June 2020 shows that so far £26.5bn has been claimed in total.  The rate of take up averaged out at 31% across the country, however it varied considerably across the sectors.  Accommodation and Food Services reported the highest up take rate of 73% of employment furloughed in June 2020, followed by Arts, Entertainment and Recreation at 66%.  On the opposite end of the spectrum, Public Administration and Defence reported a take up rate of only 1%, followed by Domestic Employers and Finance and Insurance, both at 7%.  Locally take up of the furlough scheme was broadly in line with the national average in Swindon, whilst Wiltshire remained a couple of percentage points below Swindon.

 

The national furlough figures also showed that the highest take up was among the smaller companies, with 57% of the eligible at companies with 5-9 employees, 55% for those with 2-4 employees and 53% for 10-19 employees benefiting from the scheme.  The same figure for larger companies with more than 250 employees was 19%.  The data also showed the highest take up rates among the younger people, with more than half of 16-18-year olds furloughed compared to around a quarter of those in their 40s.

 

The labour market’s performance is key to our economy, with job losses and lower earnings holding back consumer spending, thus depressing demand for goods and services and impacting on the profitability of companies and their ability to hire new workers.  Whilst we have seen Covid-19 and the associated lockdown negatively impacting a number of areas, the government measures have largely been successful at protecting jobs.  However, as these protection measures, such as Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme and Self-Employment Income Support Scheme, are wound down over the coming months, further increases in unemployment are expected, putting more pressure on consumer confidence and spending.

 

Within the SWLEP, our two local authorities and central government, we are working hard to offset some of these negative impacts.  Following the first stage with a £160bn support package, which included paying the wages of nearly 12 million people and supporting over a million businesses through grants, loans and rates cuts, in his Summer Economic Update in Parliament, the Chancellor announced the second package of measures, focussing on skills and young people, which various data sets have shown as most affected, nationally and locally, by Covid-19, creating jobs through investment in shovel-ready projects and greening our infrastructure, VAT cut for the hospitality sector and the Eat Out to Help Out discount scheme for diners.  A third phase of measures is expected to focus on rebuilding and be announced as part of a Budget and Spending Review in the autumn.