94,000 people are employed in the UK public relations industry, with up to a quarter forecast to change roles in 2022.

At Wadds Inc. we're tracking the medium to long term impact of COVID-19 on the workforce in the UK public relations and communications profession. LinkedIn data for January 2022 shows it be in good health.

94,000 people are working in the profession, an increase of 4,000 over the previous month. (This appears to be a large increase. We're reviewing data month-by-month during 2022 to understand seasonal fluctuations and get a complete understanding of the LinkedIn dataset).

More than 6,000 practitioners have changed jobs in the past three months. This equates to 6.4% of the overall profession. If this trend continues throughout 2022 more than a quarter of practitioners employed in the industry will change role during the year.

The public relations and communications profession is concentrated in London with more 40,000 practitioners working in the capital. Its dominance as a geographic market for talent is significant.

Over time we want to explore the shift to virtual working and whether this will have an impact on regional economies. We're tracking employment data for 50 cities and towns in the UK.

There has been a notable increase in employment in the industry (30-100 people in each location) during January in Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow, London, Newcastle, and Sheffield. It is too early yet to determine whether this is a dispersion effect as a result of COVID-19 but this trend looks likely.

Manchester is the largest community of practitioners outside of London with 3,000 people employed in the industry. Elsewhere in the UK there are clusters of more than 1,000 practitioners in Leeds, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Bristol, Glasgow, and Cardiff.

We’ve also looked at the make-up of the profession in terms of roles. There is significant demand for senior talent.

Data also shows entry and junior levels of employment are high. It provides a counter intuitive view to the assertion that entry level recruitment was frozen during the pandemic. In the current market recruiting and training junior talent is a smart strategy.