Robert Half Jobs Confidence Index: insights that work

In partnership with the Centre for Economics and Business Research, the quarterly Robert Half Jobs Confidence Index is the most authoritative report on the key socio-economic factors influencing confidence and job stability in the UK labour market. Explore the March 2025 JCI today.

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The Robert Half Jobs Confidence Index (JCI) analyses the factors determining how confident an individual is likely to feel about their ability to secure employment and fulfil their career potential, whilst creating economic value.

Equip yourself with information about the latest job security, pay, job search and progression trends to support your business strategy or job search.

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Job confidence remains high despite headwinds

The Robert Half Jobs Confidence Index remains in positive territory despite decreasing to 32.3 in Q4 2024.

Job security confidence saw the largest quarterly drop. Nonetheless, standing comfortably in positive territory at 109.4.

Over half (55%) of employees feel confident about their job looking ahead to the next six months.

Pay confidence takes a hit for the third quarter in a row

The pay confidence pillar experienced a marginal decline of 0.5 points, standing at 3.7.

The main driver behind the decline was weak labour productivity growth, measured by output per hour worked.

Real wage growth increased by 2.5% in Q4 2024. This was driven by annual growth in regular pay of 5.9%.

Job search and progression confidence on the decline

The job search and progression confidence dropped to 3.7 from 18.3 in the previous quarter. This is the lowest reading since Q4 2023.

Levels of economic inactivity (excluding students) fell on the quarter by 0.2 percentage points to 15.8%.

The share of workers confident in their future career progression fell from 46.6% in Q3 to 40.5%, marking its lowest level since Q4 2023.

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Frequently Asked Questions

To identify effectively what positive change looks like, we first need to examine and understand where problems lie. The issues of job security, social mobility, motivation and economic inactivity are key to the labour market’s strength. Understanding these can further help the development of fit-for-purpose recruitment and talent management practices. In addition to shedding light on current market trends, the Robert Half Jobs Confidence Index aims to provide actionable insights for employers, employees, job seekers and talent management professionals.

The increasingly complex macroeconomic environment has pushed business leaders to be more innovative when planning and managing people. And this is where trend is friend. By looking at the trajectory of the labour market dynamics, past and present, businesses can devise new strategies for their workforce ecosystem - permanent and temporary, as well as at arms-length workforces. For example, during times of economic headwinds employers could choose to lean on a more agile temporary staffing model or invest in overdue long-term strategies for developing permanent talent with the aim of making firms both more resilient now and in the future.

Job stability is fundamental for economic health, ensuring steady consumer spending, which further drives demand and supports business growth. It promotes business confidence, supporting expansion and innovation. Overall, job stability strengthens societal well-being, fosters long-term financial security and underpins sustained economic growth and resilience. On an individual level, when employees feel secure in their job and confident in their career progression going forward, this also helps create a healthy and robust labour market.

In a skills short, tight labour market, high jobs confidence indicates that workers know their value and their worth, giving them more bargaining power when negotiating a pay rise in a current or a new role. This could essentially lead to a wage-price spiral if rising wages drive costs higher, fuelling inflation. Central banks monitor such dynamics to balance economic growth and inflation control.

Finding purpose and fulfilment with meaningful work, whilst feeling connected and empowered, should be everyone’s right. Today’s workforce mentality has significantly evolved to a place where individuals no longer simply perceive their workplace as a means of earning a living, but as an environment of shared values, beliefs and purpose. This makes job-seeking and career-building an increasingly personal experience. However, the biggest challenges and opportunities come from sources outside one’s immediate control, such as the state of the macroeconomic environment. The purpose of the Robert Half Jobs Confidence Index is to help individuals better navigate these challenges. Keeping a finger on the pulse of current trends, employees and job seekers can make better informed decisions on how their goals on remuneration, work model and flexibility, as well as skills and progression, fit within the wider picture.

Previous indices

Pillars

While traditional measures of labour market health, like unemployment and job vacancies, are valuable, the figures alone are not enough to understand the UK’s complex labour market, that's why we have partnered with Cebr to create the quarterly Robert Half Jobs Confidence Index (JCI). The Robert Half JCI provides a holistic view of the labour market with all the stats in one place. The Robert Half Jobs Confidence Index (JCI) is uniquely comprised of four pillars:

- The first pillar is job security. This pillar is driven by the UK unemployment rate, the ratio of vacancies to unemployment, the degree of temporary work, and the self-reported confidence of employees with regard to their job security.

- The second pillar, pay confidence, takes the temperature of the outlook for remuneration. This captures the rate of real (inflation adjusted) wage growth alongside growth in productivity, which enables long-run wage growth. The pillar also draws on data on the average variance in pay and the share of workers with variable take-home pay.

- The third pillar, job search and progression confidence, captures a measure of underemployment (involuntary part-time work) and the educational background of workers in the two highest socioeconomic levels. In addition, it is driven by the self-reported confidence of employees regarding their longer term career and progression prospects and the rate of non-student economic inactivity.

- The fourth pillar, macroeconomic confidence, takes a broader look at confidence across the economy. This draws from two CEBR-compiled confidence indices from the perspective of both households (consumers) and businesses.

Methodology

This report has been produced by Cebr, an independent economics and business research consultancy established in 1992.

Each of the JCI’s 14 indicators is standardised to a normal distribution, using the back history for each. This centres variables around their historical mean and assigns scores based on their standard deviation difference from this mean.

After assigning a positive and negative direction for each variable, the scores are scaled by 100 and pillar scores are determined by the average of the respective sub-indicators. This typically provides pillar scores that vary between -100 and +100, though it is possible for scores to fall outside this range.

A pillar score of greater than zero implies a historically positive degree of economic health from the particular perspective that the indicator measures.

The four pillars are then weighted equally to arrive at a final JCI index score, which also tends to vary between -100 and +100.