Leadership and ambition characterize this month’s rising skills
This month’s job opening saw a shift from personal traits like trustworthiness and friendliness to more strictly professional ones like commercial knowledge and being success-driven. Similarly, employers are increasingly looking for workers who can think analytically and make difficult decisions. Perhaps as market conditions get more unpredictable again employers are looking to hire people who can understand the core business but can also strategically problem solve and lead the organization through whatever comes next.
Bachelor’s Degree openings are up 70% since 2025
After a big drop in July, prospects for those with Bachelor’s Degrees are looking up. Job openings for applicants with a Bachelor’s Degree increased more than 40% in August and are up more than 70% since last August. That is a good sign for the professional sector. Job openings are also on the rise for those holding HND and HNC qualifications. These roles have been increasing steadily since February, also a signal that entry-level white collar hiring is looking up.
Methodology
Market IQ collects job postings daily from over 5 million websites across the U.K. Our system automatically identifies, extracts, and structures job data into 100+ attributes using Textkernel’s AI powered parsing technology. Each posting is normalised against professional taxonomies, enriched with company information, and deduplicated using sophisticated algorithms to identify unique job opportunities. The system maintains high levels of accuracy through automated quality controls and continuous improvement processes, making it a trusted source for U.K. labour market insights.
Skills
Market IQ utilizes Textkernel’s proprietary Skills Normalisation Taxonomy (SNT) to extract and normalise skills from job postings. Our taxonomy encompasses 13,200+ unique skill concepts mapped through 250,000+ terms, covering professional skills, IT skills, soft skills, and languages. Using advanced machine learning, the system identifies skills in context, disambiguates ambiguous terms, and normalises them to standardised concepts—enabling accurate cross-market analysis regardless of how employers phrase skill requirements. The taxonomy is continuously updated quarterly based on millions of job postings, market feedback, and labour market trends. This data-driven approach ensures Market IQ captures both established and emerging skills as they appear in the U.K. job market, providing unparalleled insights into skill demand across industries and regions. All analysis of skills excludes any skills that appear in fewer than 10,000 job descriptions.
