However, while it might not be the most ideal time to be looking for a new role, it’s certainly not impossible. Because as worrying as declining numbers of jobs sound, the reality is that the impact of COVID-19 on the employment landscape has just sped up what was bound to happen anyway. The roles that have been lost were already seeing a decline due to the development of new technology and the adoption of automation across sectors.

Plus, there are still nuggets of good news to be found, with some industries actually advertising more job vacancies in the last year compared to 2019. According to site data from CV-Library, throughout the pandemic there was a 103% rise in job vacancies in the public sector and a 98% rise in advertised roles in agriculture, followed by a 17% rise in social care roles, a 2.9% rise in education roles and a 2.1% rise in distribution roles.

Whilst the job market and opportunities available have changed, so have we as individuals. Lockdown gave us more time and space to consider what we actually want out of our jobs, as well as what the next step in our career might look like. Perhaps we’ve volunteered to help our local community and found it so rewarding we want to move into the social care sector, or maybe we’ve flourished working from home and want to find a job that allows us to work remotely.

And even though restrictions have eased, we still don’t know what the rest of the year will look like. Nothing is certain, which means that you don’t have to have it all figured out just yet.

New career: how to find a new job post-lockdown