Self-confidence is the fastest-growing skill appearing in UK job openings
Self-confidence and passion are the soft skills employers are increasingly seeking in today’s workers. Overall, the top skills are highly relational and highlight a trend toward initiative and positive attitude. In an uncertain environment and challenging times, it is clear that employers are looking to create teams that are intrinsically-motivated and will help maintain a positive work environment.
Mid-size companies are growing as a share of UK jobs
Job openings across the UK are shifting away from large organisations with 600 or more employees, and toward companies with 10-599. The smallest organisations, those with fewer than 10 employees, also represent a smaller and smaller share of job openings, perhaps because they are often the least resilient to economic ups and downs. But mid-size companies seem to be thriving and hiring at an increasing pace, especially those with 10-49 employees.
Methodology
Market IQ collects job postings daily from over 7 million+ websites in the U.S. Our system automatically identifies, extracts, and structures job data into 100+ attributes using Textkernel’s AI powered parsing technology. Each posting is normalized 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.S. labor market insights.
Skills
Market IQ utilizes Textkernel’s proprietary Skills Normalization Taxonomy (SNT) to extract and normalize 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 normalizes them to standardized 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 labor market trends. This data-driven approach ensures Market IQ captures both established and emerging skills as they appear in the U.S. 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.
