UK job postings fell 11% in the first half of 2026 and now sit 32% below their pre-pandemic level. At the same time, AI or AI-adjacent tools showed up in a record 9.4% of UK job postings by the end of June. Those two numbers, published together in Indeed's latest labour market analysis on 3 August, tell you where hiring is actually heading: down overall, but sharply up for anyone who can point to real AI capability on a CV.
Fewer jobs, more AI mentions
Indeed's senior economist Jack Kennedy called it a "two-speed labour market," and the data backs him up. Job postings dropped across most of the economy in the first six months of the year, with professional services, hospitality and retail all recording year-on-year falls. Only pockets of technology, engineering and healthcare added roles. Graduate vacancies were down 7% year-on-year as of 10 July, their weakest showing for this point in the year since 2020, and summer job postings hit a four-year low.
Set against that, AI demand kept climbing. Almost half of vacancies in software development and data and analytics now mention AI. More striking is where it's spreading next: HR, marketing, finance, management and scientific research all saw the share of AI-referencing postings rise even as total vacancies in those functions fell. Searches for AI-related roles on Indeed have grown sevenfold since ChatGPT launched, with "Engineer" and "Trainer" the most common terms attached to those searches.
Wage growth is cooling too. Advertised pay rose 3.9% annually in the three months to June, the slowest rate since February 2022, though pay in tech, healthcare and engineering held up better, reflecting continued shortages there.
What this means if you're job hunting
If you're a senior professional outside a core tech function, the practical takeaway isn't "learn to code." It's that hiring managers now expect you to describe how you've actually used AI tools in your work, not just that you're aware they exist. A finance director who can talk through how they've used AI for forecasting, or a marketing lead who's run AI-assisted campaign analysis, is answering a question recruiters are now asking by default rather than as a nice-to-have.
That shift also explains why generic CVs are struggling harder than usual right now. With postings down and competition up for the roles that remain, the CVs getting through are the ones that state specific AI-adjacent contributions in specific terms, not the ones that claim to be "forward-thinking" or "results-driven." An ATS, and increasingly the hiring manager behind it, is looking for concrete evidence: which tools, what outcome, what scale.
Pay transparency is a smaller but related thread here. Around 58% of UK postings included salary information in the three months to June, still below the 64% peak from early 2025 but recovering. Combined with slower wage growth, it's worth checking how your target roles are actually being priced before you walk into a negotiation assuming last year's numbers still hold.
If you're updating your CV or LinkedIn profile for this market, running it through ECT's ATS checker will flag whether your AI-related experience is phrased in language that both a parsing system and a human reader will actually pick up on. And if you're unsure which of your past projects count as "AI experience" in a hiring manager's eyes, the JD decoder is a quick way to see what specific language a given posting is actually screening for before you tailor anything.