Tourism and food sectors help get Scotland's jobs market back on track after tough year

The latest Manpower snapshot suggests that employers have grown slightly more confident.

Tourism has benefited from a post-pandemic rebound and major events such as Edinburgh's summer festivals.

Scotland has been one of the hardest hit employment markets in the aftermath of the pandemic but there are signs of a rebound driven by a booming tourism sector, a new report suggests.

Releasing its latest quarterly UK employment outlook, global recruitment firm Manpower said Scottish firms had been particularly badly impacted by the economic slowdown with nearly every sector feeling the impact of high inflation and the cost-of-living squeeze. However, 2023 has seen a gradual improvement in companies’ hiring intentions as employers have grown “slightly more confident”, the latest study notes.

Julia Morgan, head of permanent recruitment at Manpower UK, said: “While we started 2023 with a fairly positive outlook for hiring at +16 per cent, it’s encouraging to see this outlook has increased gradually over the year as employers have grown slightly more confident. A large part of this confidence is driven by two areas in particular.

“Firstly, a widely reported boom in Scotland’s tourism industry driven by significant visitor increases year-on-year. This is partly a consequence of post-pandemic changes to travel preferences and also driven by increased interest in eco-tourism and the popularity of outdoor pursuits. This complements the other blossoming sectors - Scotland’s agricultural and food and drink manufacturing industries which have together been maturing in scale and diversity.”

The employment outlook measure heading into the new year has risen to a “healthy” +26 per cent, Morgan noted, however the report also reveals that skills gaps across all sectors have reached an 18-year high. “This presents a huge challenge for every sector,” she added, “and we are advising organisations to adopt a new approach to skills-based hiring in order to avoid stagnation next year.”

The report was published as it emerged that the official unemployment rate in Scotland had fallen to 3.8 per cent with a record number of people in work. Monthly figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show the unemployment rate in Scotland fell from 3.9 per cent between July and September to 3.8 per cent between August and October. The number of people in work remained static, with 2.45 million payrolled employees across Scotland, the highest number on record, between August and October.