Data and Hiring Trends The October Job Market Report 2022

​Across the digital sector, we are seeing hiring slow down, with a 5% decrease over the same 90-day period compared with last year. Deepening economic uncertainty and low employment rate in the UK has meant some workers are choosing to stay put, leading to a candidate-led market...

Our October 2022 Job Market Report looks at changes in salary expectations and trends across Agency jobs, DTC, Technology Vendors, Media Owners and Publisher vacancies. It compares 90-day trends from 2022 and 2021 so that businesses can better understand the hiring landscape and, more importantly, stay ahead of the competition.

The report breaks down relevant job vacancies in each sector with commentary from experts in those markets.

The digital market is experiencing candidate shortages and the cost of living crisis is pushing up salary expectations and an emphasis is needed for employers to act fast and with flexibility to secure the best talent.

Those employers who continue to invest in recruitment, particularly upskilling, may find they weather the recession better and will be in a stronger position to benefit from the upturn as and when it comes*.

KPMG and REC, UK Report on Jobs

Agencies

“The Agency market has remained fairly consistent for October (-1%) across all new vacancies for 2022 and 2021. Although some Agencies have been advised to pause hiring due to their own clients reducing spend, we are still finding there is a demand for talent across all areas – most heavily within Data.

This may change through October as Media Agencies often review their recruitment budgets for 2022 as the year comes to a close.

Yet, for now, the ongoing demand for specialist marketing talent, and other agency roles, reflected the 31% increase in salaries across all areas and keeps the Agency market buoyant at this stage in 2022.”

Holly Simpson, Director

Download our October 2022 Job Market Report to look at changes in salary and new vacancies for those working in:

Account Management, Ad Tech, Ad Operations, Content, Creative, Data, Digital Marketing (Paid Search, Paid Social, SEO and Biddable), Media Planning, Programmatic Trading and Project Management

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Direct-to-Consumer (DTC)

“With a modest uplift in the number of overall vacancies and salaries vs 2021, the recent post pandemic normalisation of hiring trends appears to be in evidence here.

Data jobs continue to show a significant increase in demand as businesses strive to better understand their customer behaviour and marketing effectiveness. Continuing from our September report we have again seen increase in overall demand for Data hires vs 2021, maybe not surprisingly a trend that we have also seen across our agency clients.

Product & eCommerce vacancies also showed positive signs of growth and, again, a trend continued from our September report. The majority of this growth has come from working with high growth start-up / scale-up DTC clients, in a hopefully positive sign for the UK eCommerce market.”

Rob Moss, Associate Director

Download our October 2022 Job Market Report to look at changes in salary and new vacancies for those working in:

Content, Data, Digital Marketing, Ecommerce and Product

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Technology Vendors

Our data looked at the Technology Vendor landscape, looking at salaries and vacancy trends including those in MarTech, AdTech, FinTech, HR Tech, EdTech, HealthTech, Mobility Tech, PropTech and SaaS.

“Overall, the Technology Sector has experienced no change in new vacancies compared with the same 90 day period in 2021, according to our data, with many sales jobs, marketing vacancies and other technology vendor jobs experiencing growth still; most notably Account Managers (53%), Ad Tech Sales (38%) and Ad Operations (25%).

However, October saw a slight decline in the number of roles being released across Marketing Technology and SaaS vendors for sales (-19%) and customer success roles (-21%), impacted slightly with the holiday season being back in full swing since Covid19.

We saw an increased level of clients approaching us to work with them alongside their internal talent teams on very hard to fill and niche hires across the Marketing Technology and SaaS space as the competition in the market for specialised talent increases into the year end.”

Matt Demain, Associate Director

Download our October 2022 Job Market Report to look at changes in salary and new vacancies for those working in:

Account Management, Ad Operations, Ad Tech Sales, Customer Success, Digital Marketing, Marketing, Product, Programmatic Trading, Technology Sales

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Media Owners and Publishers

“Our data shows an increasingly challenging job market, both in the decline of candidates wishing to leave the security of their current role, and the slowdown of recruitment.

We have seen a significant decrease of hires across the Media Owner and Publisher space with 55% less open roles in the same 90 day period compared with last year; part of this can be attributed to mergers in the publisher space causing a slow down on hiring but this decrease is also reflective of a more cautious wider attitude to hiring.

The downturn in candidate availability, combined with the rising cost of living has driven up salary demands across permanent and temp pay (25% increase for perm hires): most significantly across Ad Operations vacancies (23%) and Data roles (21%).

Interestingly, time to fill open vacancies within the Media Owner and Publisher space has decreased from an average of 46 days to 36 in 2022.”

Richard Morris, Manager

Download our October 2022 Job Market Report to look at changes in salary and new vacancies for those working in:

Account Management, Ad Operations, Media Sales, Data, Digital Marketing and Programmatic Trading

Conclusion

Whilst uncertainty around markets is clear, there are still strong pockets of hiring in a digital sector that is growing.

In response to our first report, we have also included information on average contract day rates and commentary from Hannah Brown, Associate Director of our Contract Division:

“The contract market remains a constant support for a digital market that is experiencing top talent shortages. With hundreds of contracts on our books, our contract division can help secure the best freelance talent with specialist skills and experience.

Whilst permanent salaries have continued to rise, we have seen contractor day rates plateau…”

Download Sphere’s October 2022 Job Market Report here.