The Big Picture
It will surprise nobody to hear the employment market has been tough for a while now. The headwinds are well known: geopolitical instability, high inflation and low growth, a large budget deficit, cautious business outlook, increased costs of hiring – the list could go on.
Despite this, the UK economy’s performance has been much like a mid-range pillow: soft, but not quite down. Growth has been less disappointing than anticipated[1][2], and it appears reports of the UK’s productivity death were greatly exaggerated.[3][4]
Similarly, there are signs of life in the job market – the latest REC/KPMG report highlights a rise in permanent placements (the first since Sep 2022), while temp billings marked a fifth consecutive month of growth.[5]
Nevertheless, a big picture view always obscures nuance. Different sectors face different challenges and opportunities, which don’t always sit neatly in a macro summary.
This article is an attempt to look beyond the headlines and answer the question: “how are the sectors that we serve faring?”
Consulting
Sentiment
Consulting enters Q4 in a slightly puzzling position – fee income is growing, there’s a decent amount of confidence in the sector, and partner earnings remain extremely strong; yet jobs have been scythed, share prices have collapsed in the biggest listed consultancies[6][7], and the spectre of AI competition looms large.
Recent news items on the key UK consultancies centre on job losses, with KPMG’s UK operations cutting more than 500 roles[8] – further pushing UK headcount down to around 1,200 fewer staff than its pandemic peak[9]. PwC recorded its first revenue decline in 20 years, cutting EMEA jobs by 4,000 (around 12%),[10] while Deloitte shed 1,000 staff in the 12 months to May.[11]
These cuts seem to be mirrored in the recruitment data too: Bloomberg’s analysis of job board postings highlighted a decline of around 80% in London management consultant vacancies.[12]
Yet, there are more sources for cautious optimism than the above would suggest. The Management Consultancies Association expects fee income to increase by 6% this year and 8% next year, export growth rates tripled YoY, and graduate hiring is up 10%.[13][14] Even job cuts can be cast in a different light: one could interpret them as an expected correction to the sector’s rapid hiring growth around the pandemic years. (In any case, those cuts have strengthened profits[10][11], which may help salve the morale-dampening effect of barren office spaces.) Moreover, the worries over AI – which have particularly affected IT consultancies – appear to be opening the door for smaller, more agile challenger firms to carve out a toehold.[15]
Overall, sales momentum seems to be providing a source of confidence,[13] which makes consulting something of an outlier among the wider business services sector – where sentiment was lowest among all sectors surveyed in ICAEW’s latest report.[16] Overall, the mood appears resilient, and we suspect consultants will collectively back themselves to overcome any hurdles.
Job market dynamics
As is covered in the full report, we have used vacancy rates as a key data point in assessing job market dynamics.
Briefly, the vacancy rate is the number of unfilled job vacancies divided by total jobs (both filled and unfilled). A high vacancy rate indicates a tight labour market, where job vacancies are abundant relative to people. Conversely, a low vacancy rate means lower demand for staff. Vacancy rate is therefore one of the clearest barometers for how employer demand stacks up against employee availability.
Consulting has no ONS category of its own. It sits within professional, scientific and technical activities, which is a pretty roomy category including everything from legal to R&D to veterinary services. Therefore, the vacancy rate data here offers more of a backdrop than direct insight. With that in mind, the wider sector’s vacancy rate stands at 2.2%, which is the lowest since 2013 (pandemic aside) and well below the average.[17]
Amid this weaker employer demand, jobs growth appears to be shifting towards self-employment in the wider sector. While 51,000 jobs were added in the year to June 2026, nearly three quarters of those were self-employed roles.[17] Whether the relative lack of vacancies is a causal factor in this trend, part of a wider structural shift, or simply a coincidence is not something we can know given available data.
Against this backdrop, consulting-specific data is patchier but seems to point the opposite way. Despite a Consultancy.uk article (quoting ONS data) highlighting a 56% rise in independent consultants over 2023-24[18], more recent evidence suggests a reversal of this trend: the ONS population survey finds the share of independent management consultants has declined from 22.7% in 2024 to 15.4% in 2026.[19] The same data shows a broad stability in total job numbers since 2023.
Taken together, the evidence suggests a sector keeping its headcount steady, caught between the opposing forces of solid financial performance and caution regarding the future. While there is some recalibration among bigger firms following their post-pandemic hiring sprees, consulting is far from a sector in retreat.
Consulting: the bottom line
Consulting presents a puzzle: fee income, exports and confidence are all growing, yet the largest firms have cut jobs and AI looms large. On balance, the evidence points to a sector holding its headcount steady and recalibrating after its pandemic-era hiring spree, rather than one in retreat. Smaller, more agile firms are also making headway.
For employers: cuts at the largest firms have released experienced talent into the market. That gives mid-sized and challenger consultancies a real opportunity to recruit people they might previously have struggled to attract.
For candidates: the headlines make the market sound worse than it is. Graduate hiring is up, and looking beyond the biggest names to smaller, challenger firms (or more specialist operators) will broaden your prospects.