Permanent Hiring Stalls, Contract Pays More: What 12,910 Live Job Adverts in London, Manchester and Edinburgh Show

Job hunting in the UK right now? The question is blunt: hold out for a permanent role, or take the contract?

Nearly three in four of the job adverts ResuMinder tracks in London, Manchester and Edinburgh — 73.8% — have been live for more than 30 days without coming down. That sluggishness is the backdrop to this month's KPMG and REC UK Report on Jobs: its permanent placements index fell to 44.1 in May 2026, down from 47.5 in April — a sharp decline — while temporary billings rose to 52.2, the strongest reading since April 2023. The wider market is shrinking too: Office for National Statistics figures put UK vacancies at 705,000 for February–April 2026, the lowest since February–April 2021 and down 3.9% on the quarter.

Survey indices measure recruiter sentiment; adverts show what employers actually publish. So we split the 12,910 active postings ResuMinder indexes across London (10,993), Manchester (1,384) and Edinburgh (585) — 9,225 advertised full-time, 3,083 contract — by job type, posting age, advertised pay and work mode. In these three cities, the shift to temporary work shows up in pay and terms, not in volume.

Adverts are piling up — contract ones included

Adverts that do close, close quickly on both sides — a median of 19 days from posting to removal for full-time and 17 for contract (710 and 146 delisted adverts). The sluggishness lives in the stock that stays up. 6,693 of the 9,225 live full-time adverts — 72.6% — have been posted for over 30 days. Contract stock skews older still: 2,494 of 3,083 live contract adverts, or 80.9%, are past the 30-day mark. A long-lived advert is not necessarily a ghost job — some headcount is simply parked — but on volume alone these cities show no temporary takeover. Everything is ageing.

New supply points the same way: since the start of May the cities added 2,936 full-time postings, 731 contract and 311 part-time — fresh permanent-style listings still outnumber contract roughly four-to-one. The exception is Edinburgh, where contract (69) has edged full-time (67) — a small flow, but the only city where temporary supply leads.

Contract roles show their pay — and more of it

The clearest practical difference is transparency: 82.7% of live contract adverts state an annual salary within our £12,000–£400,000 band, against just 29.2% of full-time adverts. Across all 12,910 postings the rate is 43.1% — 39.4% in London, 60.0% in Manchester and 68.4% in Edinburgh.

Where pay is declared, contract sits higher. Among postings added since the start of May with an in-band salary (1,065 full-time; 595 contract), the median advertised minimum is £44,693 for contract against £40,317 for full-time; the gap is widest at the 25th percentile (£38,453 versus £32,890).

Entry-level London is the starkest case: of 317 entry-level postings added since the start of May, 85.5% are permanent-track and 13.2% contract — yet the advertised median is £39,148 for contract versus £28,617 for permanent-track, a 36.8% premium, and 23.8% of those contract adverts are hybrid against 2.2% of permanent ones. Edinburgh points the same way on a tiny sample (16 postings split 50/50; £34,610 versus £29,250, an 18.3% premium — indicative only), while Manchester's entry-level market remains 95.8% permanent-track. In Manchester healthcare, contract roles advertise a median of £67,325 against £39,959 full-time (18 and 25 adverts — small samples, indicative only); London healthcare is near parity (£45,031 contract, £45,953 full-time).

Two honest caveats. A pay premium cuts against a simple "temps are cheaper" reading — much of this looks like specialised, project-based hiring, though selection bias may contribute. And contract pay is not like-for-like with permanent total reward: paid leave, pension and notice protections sit outside the headline figure.

Where permanent hiring still lives

Permanent demand has not vanished; it has concentrated. Among London postings added since the start of May, sales manager adverts run 101 full-time to none contract, software engineers 63 to 5, data scientists 37 to 5 and marketing managers 24 to 1. Contract concentration is heaviest in healthcare — London runs 89 full-time to 65 contract, and Edinburgh 2 to 13 — and in project delivery: Edinburgh lists 3 contract project manager roles and no full-time ones.

This also remains an on-site market. Of postings added since the start of May, full-time runs 82.9% on-site, 12.3% remote and 4.9% hybrid; contract runs 84.8% on-site, 15% hybrid and just 0.1% remote. Across the whole live stock, London leads on remote share at 13.3% of postings, against 4.6% in Manchester and 3.8% in Edinburgh.

What this means if you are job hunting now

• Weighing up contract work? Benchmark before applying. With 82.7% of live contract adverts showing in-band pay against 29.2% of full-time, contract listings are the easier market to price — a useful reference even in a permanent search.
• Prioritise fresh listings. Delisted adverts came down in a median of 17 days (contract) and 19 (full-time); 80.9% of live contract adverts are already past a month old.
• Don't write off a stale advert outright. Nearly three in four live adverts are over 30 days old; age is not proof of abandonment, but pair any old listing with fresh applications elsewhere.
• Set realistic flexibility expectations. Among postings added since May, remote contract adverts barely exist (0.1%); hybrid (15%) is the contract market's concession.
• Let geography steer you. Manchester is the most permanent-leaning of the three markets; Edinburgh currently tilts contract, above all in healthcare.

Browse the live postings behind these figures on ResuMinder's job search.

Methodology

Source: live job postings indexed by ResuMinder for London, Manchester and Edinburgh as of 10 June 2026 — 12,910 active postings (10,993 London; 1,384 Manchester; 585 Edinburgh), crawl-excluded bulk feeds removed to match the live public site. The stock splits into 9,225 full-time, 3,083 contract and 589 part-time adverts, plus a few internships. "Permanent" is proxied by advertised job type (full-time, plus part-time in the entry-level grouping); "contract" maps to the REC's temporary category — a stated job type is not an audit of the underlying contract. "Healthcare" combines our nurse and doctor title buckets. Advert-age shares are within job type: 6,693 of 9,225 live full-time and 2,494 of 3,083 live contract adverts were posted more than 30 days ago. Salary figures are advertised, not negotiated, minimums within a £12,000–£400,000 annual band: transparency shares count live postings stating an in-band salary (2,691 full-time; 2,550 contract; 5,561 overall), while pay percentiles use postings added 1 May–10 June 2026 (1,065 full-time; 595 contract; entry-level: 149 permanent-track and 37 contract in London, 6 and 7 in Edinburgh). Posting flow, sector counts and work-mode splits use the same window (2,936 full-time; 731 contract; 311 part-time new adverts). Delisting medians cover 710 full-time and 146 contract adverts removed from the three cities — a delisting is not proof of a hire, nor an old advert proof of a ghost job. Samples under 30 rows are indicative only. KPMG/REC and ONS figures are external, attributed and linked above — not ResuMinder data. All figures are a snapshot as of 10 June 2026; no year-on-year comparison is available.