The Office for National Statistics (ONS), Britain's official statistics agency, reported 702,000 vacancies for June to August 2026 in a bulletin published on 15 September, down 8,000 (1.1%) on the quarter and the lowest level since February to April 20211. Vacancies fell 36,000 (4.9%) over the year, declined in 13 of the 18 industry sectors, and now sit 86,000 (10.9%) below where they stood before the pandemic. The estimate carries a confidence interval of roughly plus or minus 32,000. It also reverses the direction this briefing reported in July, when the same series rose to 712,000.
The useful part of the bulletin sits under the headline. Professional, scientific and technical activities, the white-collar segment where AI exposure concentrates, shed 8,000 vacancies over the year, the joint second largest volume fall of any sector. The same bulletin puts workforce jobs in that sector up 51,000 over the year, the largest increase of any of the twenty sectors it tracks. No other British sector added as many jobs while advertising as few of them.
Take either figure alone and you write a false briefing. Together they put the Canadian differential inside a single national dataset: the work is expanding, the payroll is expanding, and the door people walk through to join it is narrowing. Whether employers are filling posts without advertising them, or growing through retention and longer hours rather than intake, this bulletin cannot say. Workforce jobs across the whole economy rose 60,000 (0.2%) to 36.7 million, so that one sector accounts for most of the country's net movement. The unemployed-to-vacancy ratio held at 2.5, unmoved since the third quarter of 2025.
