- Remote job searches rose by 140% since 2023, while postings dropped by over 50%, indicating a sharp supply-demand imbalance.
- Geographic disparities persist, with cities like London seeing high demand and listings, while some towns show jobs without local interest or vice versa.
- IT, management, and legal roles dominate remote job offerings, limiting flexibility for frontline and operational workers.
- Hybrid work is gaining ground, with employer adoption rising steadily, though jobseeker enthusiasm remains lower.
- Flexible-hours roles show unstable patterns, with search spikes followed by rapid declines—suggesting seasonal or reactive demand rather than structural change.
The UK’s labour market in 2025 is at a crossroads. While more people than ever are actively searching for remote and flexible work, employers appear to be pulling back. This growing disconnect is changing job competition, influencing workplace policy, and signalling broader changes in how, and where, Britons want to work.
These findings are drawn from internal data gathered by Jooble, one of the world’s top 10 job search websites, and ranked among the top 5 most visited job platforms in the UK, according to SimilarWeb.
The UK’s Appetite for Remote Work Keeps Growing While Supply Shrink
In the first half of 2025, jobseekers in the UK searched for remote roles at a volume that was 20% higher than in late 2024, and over 140% higher compared to the same period in 2023 – the strongest growth seen in recent years.
Interest peaked at the start of the year, reaching its highest monthly level in over two years. Meanwhile, the average number of remote job postings fell sharply – down more than 41% compared to early 2024, and over 51% lower than in the first half of 2023.
Remote Work Across the UK Is Far From Evenly Distributed
Remote work might transcend geography in principle, but in practice, location still shapes both access and opportunity.
Jooble’s regional data for the first half of 2025 reveals stark mismatches between supply and demand in certain areas – with some cities seeing high job availability but limited local search activity, and others showing strong demand with few opportunities.
Bolton stands out as an exception, offering one of the highest volumes of remote roles among smaller cities, but generating relatively low search interest locally.
Meanwhile, London remains the UK’s remote work capital, leading the country both in search interest and in the number of listings. Other major cities like Birmingham, Manchester, and Leeds also show strong demand – though in many cases, search volume exceeds job availability by a significant margin.
Smaller towns like Ashton-under-Lyne and Altrincham, meanwhile, posted a substantial number of remote roles but saw little to no jobseeker activity, underscoring a geographic disconnect in awareness or access.
Remote work is not evenly distributed across the UK – Jooble data shows hotspots of high demand but low availability in major cities, while some smaller towns offer opportunities few are looking for.
These geographic imbalances – both in oversupply and undersupply – point to a fragmented remote work ecosystem, where infrastructure, digital skills, and employer practices vary significantly by location.
Tech and Management Roles Drive the Remote Market
Jooble’s data shows that IT continues to dominate the remote job market, making up around one-third of all remote roles posted in early 2025.
Management and commercial functions – including sales and marketing – also contribute significantly, while legal roles have become increasingly digitalised, forming a sizable segment of remote-friendly roles.
Remote roles remain concentrated in digital-first sectors – IT leads the pack, followed by management and legal functions, highlighting limited flexibility for hands-on professions.
These concentrations highlight that remote work is largely accessible to professionals in strategic, analytical, and digital roles, while those in hands-on or frontline occupations face more limitations.
Hybrid Work: Interest Grows, and Employers Are Catching On
While remote work continues to dominate jobseeker interest, hybrid roles are gradually gaining traction among UK workers – and even more rapidly among employers.
Jooble data shows that searches for hybrid roles rose sharply in early 2025 – up 160% compared to late 2024. Although interest cooled slightly in the second quarter, it remained noticeably higher than the previous year’s average.
On the employer side, hybrid job postings surged during the first half of the year – growing by over 70% between January and April. Although numbers dipped slightly in May and June, they remained well above baseline levels from early 2024.
Alisa Lagovska, Recruitment Team Leader at Jooble, shared her thoughts: “The hybrid model is no longer a compromise – it’s a strategic response to balancing employee autonomy with business effectiveness. It helps maintain team cohesion, accelerates decision-making, and strengthens company culture – not through rigid control, but through trust and structure. That’s why more and more organisations are adopting two-to-three-day office patterns, especially in teams where cross-functional collaboration and joint decision-making are essential.”
This reflects a shifting employer strategy: balancing remote flexibility with in-office engagement. While hybrid models have not yet captured mass jobseeker enthusiasm, they may serve as a bridge between workforce expectations and organisational realities.
Flexible Hours Jobs Struggle to Sustain Growth
Flexible-hours roles, covering part-time, adjustable schedules, and outcome-based jobs, continue to develop as a small but active corner of the UK job market. While not yet rivalling remote or hybrid work in scale, the format has shown moments of sharp and volatile interest from both jobseekers and employers.
According to Jooble data, flexible-hours roles saw a spike in jobseeker interest at the start of 2025, with search volume increasing by 55% compared to the previous quarter. This spike may reflect a combination of post-holiday mindset shifts, where workers reassess work-life balance; cost-of-living pressures prompting people to seek secondary or adaptable income streams; and public discourse around flexible work legislation, which gained visibility in late 2024.
However, by Q2 2025, search volume declined – returning closer to Q4 levels. The cooling trend suggests that while the appetite for flexibility remains, it may fluctuate with seasonal routines, household economics, or awareness peaks, rather than indicating a consistent structural shift like remote work.
The employer-side data reflects this volatility even more dramatically. Job postings peaked dramatically at the start of the year, then dropped sharply in the following months. A brief rebound occurred in April, but by June, volumes had fallen again to well below the January peak.
This swing suggests that flexible roles may be project-based, seasonal, or highly sector-specific – common in industries like education, events, retail, and customer service, where employers scale workforces according to campaign cycles or school terms, rather than long-term staffing strategies.
What It Means for 2025 and Beyond
The data indicates a UK workforce increasingly aligned around autonomy, location flexibility, and personal work-life balance. However, the market is not yet structured to fully accommodate these preferences.
- Jobseekers face rising competition and limited remote opportunities.
- Employers risk missing out on top talent if they don’t adapt to flexible models.
- Regions outside major cities may continue to experience an accessibility gap without greater investment in remote-friendly infrastructure or upskilling.
Will Employers Keep Up with Jobseekers?
The UK’s employment landscape is evolving, but not at the same pace for everyone. Remote work is no longer a pandemic-induced trend – it’s a mainstream expectation. As demand outstrips supply and hybrid formats gain momentum, 2025 could mark an inflection point in how flexibility is prioritised in the UK workplace.
Snapshot of 2025: Remote jobs face a shortage, hybrid gains ground with employers, and flexible roles remain unpredictable.
Whether businesses fully embrace this shift or fall behind may determine who retains, and who loses, the next generation of skilled talent.
About Jooble
Jooble is a global product-based IT company. Its main product is an international job search website that millions in 67 countries use daily. The website aggregates thousands of job openings from various sources on a single page. It is one of the top 10 most popular employment resources in terms of traffic in the Jobs And Employment segment, according to SimilarWeb.
Press Contact: Yelyzaveta Symonenko, PR Manager, Jooble, yelyzaveta.symonenko@jooble.com