What’s the outlook if you find yourself unexpectedly a jobseeker in 2025, needing outplacement support?
It hardly seems like 5 minutes ago we were talking about there being over a million job vacancies in the UK. Vacancies peaked at over 1.3 million in April 2022.
Being made redundant is never easy. Job loss is often ranked in the top 5 most stressful life events. Up there with things like bereavement, divorce and major illness.
The psychological impact of losing your job can bring a range of emotions from disbelief, shock, anger and fear. Emotions so strong that, in some cases, individuals really struggle to move on.
As outplacement experts, Chiumento have long recognised that helping individuals deal with the emotional impact of change is as important as practical support like search for opportunities, writing great CVs and preparing for interview.
Redundancy Post-Pandemic: What’s Different?
In the immediate post-pandemic world, some of those emotional responses to redundancy were mitigated by the abundance of opportunities in the UK job market. Many delegates, after getting over the initial shock, were finding that opportunities for new employment were plentiful. And often new roles were coming with better pay than the job they’d just left.
Even at the senior executive level, we were seeing job resettlement times well below the long-term average.
Yes, competition for the best roles was still strong. Your application had to be spot on. And you could not afford to have an “off day” when getting to an interview. And when you did get an offer, it was often possible to negotiate a great package.
Such was the demand and competition for top talent.
From Abundance to Competition: The Shifting Job Market in 2025
Roll on to 2024 and we are seeing some notable changes. Let’s start with the hard numbers…
Overall redundancies in the UK (as measured by the Office for National Statistics) remain at historically low levels. Most noticably below the on-going level in the years leading up to the banking crisis. Current predictions on redundancies in 2025 vary wildly. We’ve seen research predicting anything from 21% to 80+% of employers expecting to make redundancies in 2025.
No doubt the employers’ NI tax increase will have an impact – especially in low margin businesses. How big we are yet to see.
Our guess is that we’ll see redundancies increase by 10-15% over 2025. But that’s still well below the historic norm. It’s no comfort though if you happen to be one of those unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end.
So, what sort of employment market will those individuals be released into?
A Tougher Market for Jobseekers
From lots of conversations I’ve had in my own networks, I think the story of 2025 might well be more about employers slowing or stopping recruitment rather than actually making redundancies. Leavers not being replaced. New roles being cancelled.
Only last week, I was with an SME organisation who were telling me that they’d made the choice to cancel a number of planned graduate hires in 2025 to balance out some of the impact of the Employer’s NI increase. Savings had to be made somewhere. Their choice was to protect their existing staff.
We were already seeing a marked reduction in job vacancies in late 2024. Down to about 818,000 from that high of 1.3 million. That’s a fall of almost 40%. So many, many fewer opportunities than just three years ago.
Some in the recruitment industry – as in this BBC News feature – are already making a leap to suggest that fall in vacancies is a harbinger of a recession in 2025. We are not yet seeing that in our data or hearing it from HR Leaders.
The Importance of Outplacement Support in a Cooling Market
What we are hearing from delegates, particularly in professional and technical disciplines is that there is an increasing mis-match between the kind of jobs they are looking for and those 818,000 vacancies. Many of which are minimum wage positions in sectors like retail and social care.
Proving a point Chiumento has made many times before: that the total number of vacancies out there is no guide to how easy a specific individual will find it to secure an appropriate new role.
We predict that competition for many jobseekers will be significantly tougher in 2025. Which will make having the support of a quality career coach or career adviser even more important.
Challenges for Executive-Level Candidates
Executive level jobseekers have always faced the challenge of fewer vacancies and longer job search times. Our sense is that market has been cooling since mid-2024.
Delegates seeing fewer opportunities and hearing from executive search contacts that assignments are fewer and harder to secure.
Outplacement Support: A Strategic Advantage
What we can say for sure is that in 2025 those exiting employers with outplacement support will have a distinct advantage in a tightening job market.
Being seen to treat people professionally, compassionately and ethically when letting them go will continue to be a key ingredient in a top employer brand. Knowing that support will be there if the worse happens is a key component on keeping colleagues focused on doing a great job.
And that can play a big part in stopping a rush to exit if, and when, people get nervous about the future.
HR’s 2025 Dilemma: Doing More with Less
For HR leaders a key theme for 2025 seems to be one of doing more for less. So creative outplacement solutions may well be required. Higher levels of redundancy activity may need to be matched by finding better value outplacement solutions.
Recognise that challenge? Then we are here to help.
Whether you’re preparing for increased redundancies or seeking immediate outplacement support, Chiumento is here to support you.
👉 Get in touch with us today to explore targeted outplacement support that delivers real results.