Job vacancies in the automotive industry have fallen by 41% in March, as the Coronavirus outbreak continues to affect the sector.

According to independent job board CV-Library, the UK job market has been hit hard by the coronavirus outbreak.

It compared job market data from March 2020 with figures from February 2020 and the same period in 2019.

The automotive sector experienced the tenth largest drop in vacancies out of all the industries monitored.

CV-Library’s data also shows that applications to automotive jobs have dropped by 20.1% year-on-year and 17.4% month-on-month. 

Lee Biggins, CEO and founder of CV-Library, said: “It’s not surprising that the outbreak of COVID-19 has prevented businesses from moving forward with their hiring plans. With global supply chains disrupted and many organisations forced to close their doors in order to respect social distancing rules, companies have had to change the way they operate and adapt to this new normal. Sadly, this has involved placing existing employees on furlough and even making redundancies.  

“The national unemployment rate is set to soar in April and there’s no doubt that this will be a really tricky time for business owners across the UK. However, we will come out the other side of the pandemic and organisations need to be ready. Remember, we may be under these social distancing restrictions for some time, so be prepared to hire remotely and consider how that’s going to work. For example, you’ll probably need to adapt your recruitment process to rely on techniques such as video interviews.” 

The current situation has caused new candidate registrations on the CV-Library site to rise dramatically, with the amount of automotive professionals registering their CV increasing by 14.8% year-on-year. However, the amount of people searching for automotive jobs on the site has dropped by 49% year-on-year, suggesting that the industry’s candidates may be looking for work in different sectors temporarily.  

Industries with largest drop in job vacancies:

  • Administration (down 39.1%)  
  • Leisure/Tourism (down 38.9%)  
  • Media (down 36.8%)  
  • Marketing (down 36.6%)  
  • Design (down 35.7%) 
  • Recruitment (down 35.7%) 
  • Sales (down 32%)  
  • Catering (down 29.6%)  
  • Legal (down 29.4%) 
  • Automotive (down 28%)