Jobs in London

Insights into the Labour Market

The total number of jobs in London is predicted to increase to 6.9 million by 2041. This is the equivalent of about 49,000 additional jobs each year.

In this bulletin, we look at three ways of understanding which jobs might be growing in the future.

Firstly, we can look at the jobs that we have seen growing in 2017. These are:

• Programmers and software development professionals
• IT business analysts, architects and systems designers
• Web design and development professionals
• Sales accounts and business development managers
• Marketing associate professionals
• Management consultants and business analysts
• Business sales executives
• HR officers
• Chartered and certified accountants

Based on an analysis of online job vacancy postings from January to October 2017, these roles had 25,000 vacancies posted or more.

Secondly, we can look at specific sets of businesses to see which areas of those businesses are likely to grow more future jobs. For example, one set of industries that we know is predicted to grow in London is the creative economy.

Although the creative economy is predicted to grow, some areas are seeing a faster rate of job growth than others:

• Advertising and marketing (+41.7% 28,900 jobs)
• Music, performing and visual arts (+40.5% 28,200 jobs)
• IT, software and computer services (+37.2% 47,000 jobs)

Whilst two areas have declined since 2012:

• Film, TV, video, radio and photography (-8.1% -8,200 jobs)
• Museums, galleries and libraries (-3.4% -700 jobs)

Thanks to GLA Economics for the data on the Creative Economy in London.

Finally, we can look at the latest evidence that looks across lots of factors that will affect employment and see what is predicted.

The most recent example is Nesta’s “Employment in 2030” report – you can read our insights into this report in the Jobs in 2030 area.