The 1,494 UK job ads that openly advertise visa sponsorship: 47% NHS, a £47,951 median — and MAC recommendations due this month
With the Migration Advisory Committee's Stage 2 shortage-list recommendations due in July 2026, ResuMinder's live index finds 1,494 active UK job ads explicitly advertising visa sponsorship, from 372 employers: 47% are NHS, two-thirds health and care, the median advertised salary is £47,951 — and among the 93% of ads that post a salary, 59% advertise at or above the £41,700 headline threshold.
The Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) is due to report this month on Stage 2 of its Temporary Shortage List review — the stage runs until July 2026, per the government's call for evidence — recommending which mid-skill occupations, at RQF levels 3–5, keep access to Skilled Worker visa sponsorship. Stage 1 shortlisted 82 occupations, according to immigration law firm Fragomen.
While it finishes that work, we measured the openly sponsored end of the UK jobs market. As of 5 July 2026, our live database of 8,165,747 active job ads worldwide holds 1,494 active UK ads that explicitly advertise visa sponsorship, from 372 employers. That is not a count of all sponsoring employers — the Home Office licenses tens of thousands, many of which never mention sponsorship in the listings we index. These are the ones that put it in writing where we can see it.
Nearly half NHS, two-thirds health and care — and almost entirely on-site
696 of the 1,494 ads (47%) come from NHS organisations — 123 distinct NHS bodies, a third (33%) of the 372 employers in the set. Health and care overall reaches two-thirds: 992 ads (66%). Tech and data supply just 89 ads (6%); the remaining 413 cover everything else.
The ten busiest sponsors tell the same story — eight of the ten are health providers:
| Employer | Live sponsored ads |
|---|---|
| Elysium Healthcare | 31 |
| East London NHS Foundation Trust | 28 |
| Monzo | 24 |
| Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board | 23 |
| South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust | 22 |
| Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust | 21 |
| Nuffield Health | 20 |
| Anthropic | 20 |
| Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust | 17 |
| Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust | 17 |
The stock is fresh — 359 ads (24%) were posted in the past seven days, 856 in the past 30. It is also overwhelmingly full-time (1,404 ads tagged "Full-time") and overwhelmingly on-site: just 66 ads (4.4%) are remote — for almost every listing, sponsorship means an on-site UK role.
What the ads advertise: a £47,951 median
93% of sponsored ads post a salary: 1,396 carry an annual advertised minimum inside our £10,000–£250,000 plausibility band. The median is £47,951, with the lower quartile at £39,959 and the upper at £59,298. That lower-quartile figure is itself an NHS pay-scale anchor — a first sign of how far health pay banding shapes this market (more below). These are advertised minimums, not pay received.
The obvious reference point is MAC's review of salary requirements, published on 18 December 2025, which recommended keeping the general Skilled Worker threshold at £41,700, lowering occupation-specific "going rates" from the median to the 25th percentile, and a £33,400 new-entrant rate. Set against those markers, descriptively: 829 of the 1,396 salaried ads (59%) advertise at or above £41,700; 321 sit between £33,400 and £41,699; 246 below £33,400.
None of this is a compliance finding: many health and care roles recruit under the Health and Care Worker visa, with its own salary rules, and pay-scale occupations receive different going-rate treatment — an advertised figure below £41,700 is not evidence of non-compliance. In health and care, 486 salaried ads advertise at or above £41,700 and 505 below it (51% below), consistent with Agenda for Change banding. Tech and data is the mirror image: 34 at or above versus 2 below (94% at or above). Across everything else, it is 309 versus 60.
Role by role
| Role | Salaried ads (n) | 25th percentile | Median | 75th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Medical consultant (hospital doctor grade) | 108 | £113,565 | £113,565 | £113,565 |
| Software/data roles (indicative) | 26 | £60,000 | £69,500 | £79,000 |
| Social worker | 35 | — | £40,643 | — |
| Nurse | 242 | £32,557 | £39,959 | £45,953 |
| Occupational therapist | 80 | — | £39,959 | — |
| Speech and language therapist | 48 | — | £39,959 | — |
Advertised minimum (salary_min) percentiles, sorted by median; dashes: values not shown.
Two honesty notes. £39,959 recurs because many health ads quote national Agenda for Change pay points, not bespoke salaries, so identical values pile up — the consultant row, with all three percentiles on £113,565, is the same effect at the top of the scale. And the software/data sample (n=26) is below our 30-ad bar: treat it as indicative only.
The practical reading: nurses, therapists and doctors will find sponsorship advertised widely, across 123 NHS bodies alone. Software and data candidates face a far thinner market — but one pitched at markedly higher advertised pay: an indicative £69,500 median (n=26) against £39,959 for nurses (n=242).
Where the jobs are
London leads with 291 sponsored ads; Manchester has 27, Edinburgh 5 — too few for salary statistics. The spread is genuinely nationwide: Cambridge (26), Birmingham (20), Somerset (16), Cumberland (16), Liverpool (14), Plymouth (14) and Coventry (12) all rank among the most common location strings, and 49 ads list only a generic "GB".
London carries a clear advertised-pay premium: across its 212 salaried sponsored ads, the median advertised figure is £54,715 — 24% above the £44,110 median for all salaried London ads in our index (n=5,314 of 37,428 active). In the capital, ads that advertise sponsorship typically advertise higher pay than the London market overall.
What to watch
The backdrop is soft: the ONS's June Labour market overview counted 707,000 vacancies (March–May 2026) and 4.9% unemployment (next release: 21 July 2026), while Indeed Hiring Lab puts UK postings down 13% year on year and 32% below the pre-pandemic baseline.
For candidates who need sponsorship, the items to watch are the MAC's Stage 2 recommendations, due this month, and how ministers then respond — to those and to December's salary-review recommendations. Until then, the market as advertised is health-led, pay-scale-priced, national in reach but London-tilted on advertised pay — and fresh: roughly a quarter of the stock is under a week old. The 1,494 listings behind these numbers are live and searchable on ResuMinder.
Methodology
All figures are ResuMinder's own, pulled live on 5 July 2026 from our database of active job ads; live counts change daily. "Sponsored ads" means active UK ads that explicitly advertise visa sponsorship, flagged via sponsoredjobs.co.uk enrichment (1,036 ads), NHS Jobs (362), Greenhouse (63), Ashby (17) and hiring_cafe (16) — 1,494 active UK ads from 372 employers. The explicit flag undercounts UK sponsorship overall: the Home Office licenses tens of thousands of sponsors, many of whom never mention it in ads. Salary statistics use the advertised salary_min, annual GBP, within a £10,000–£250,000 plausibility band (n=1,396, 93% of sponsored ads); percentiles are true percentiles (percentile_cont); figures are advertised, not measured earnings. Many health ads quote national pay-scale points, so identical values recur and can pin several percentiles to one figure (£39,959; £113,565). Threshold comparisons are descriptive only. Locations are matched on ad location text, with North American namesake locations excluded.