NEARLY 80,000 job vacancies were advertised in Dorset in the first nine months of this year – almost twice as many as there were in 2020.

However, the three months to September showed vacancies in decline for the first time after almost two years of unprecedented growth.

Dorset Local Enterprise Partnership’s (LEP) Labour Market and Skills report for the third quarter also shows advertised salaries increasing only slightly or remaining flat, despite soaring inflation.

Vinita Nawathe, executive director of Dorset LEP, said: “The release of our latest labour market information is set against the volatile political and economic backdrop of the last quarter. The impact of rising prices has largely eroded any increases in wages which is also reflected locally.

“Reports that UK hospitality businesses are increasingly turning to older workers to plug staffing shortages is interesting, reflecting shifting demographics, as well as the continued demand for people to fill care roles which is only expected to increase as the county’s ageing population increases and shortages continue.”

There were around 25,000 vacancies in the third quarter of the year, the report says, which was not far below the levels seen at the start of the year, despite a continuous three-month decline. The 79,500 vacancies advertised in the first three quarters was a third higher than in 2021.

The employers advertising the most vacancies were in health, local government, finance, tourism and hospitality, education, manufacturing and retail.

The largest growth in demand was in accommodation and food service, where job postings more than doubled year-on-year to 5,183.

But the sector advertising the most vacancies was health and social work, where there were 14,727 jobs posted. There were 4,300 vacancies for carers posted in the nine months.

Hospitality businesses were increasingly turning to older workers to plug staffing shortages, with around 19 per cent saying the proportion of over-50s in their organisations had increased in the past year.

The report said advertised wages were not rising markedly, with offered salaries “at best increasing marginally, or at worst remaining flat”.

Employment levels fell but so did unemployment, highlighting a rise in economic inactivity, the report said.

“There appears to have been a significant drop in the proportion of economically inactive who want a job (10,900 in June 22 v 20,300 in June 21), conversely a big increase in those who are not seeking a job (82,700 v 66,800),” it added.

The “soft skills” most frequently requested by employers were communication, customer service, management, sales, detail-orientation and marketing and personal attributes such as enthusiasm and self-motivation. Many of these skills were less common in candidate profiles than in job adverts, the report found.