I appreciate it’s very much anecdotal, but I ran a small poll on LinkedIn recently. The question was simply ‘How are you feeling about the job market at the moment?’ with the options a) It’s easy 
to move jobs, b) It’s a little challenging, c) It’s difficult but possible, and d) It’s extremely tough. No one answered a), and currently the majority, c. 70%, (the poll is still live) chose option d).
People who answered the poll are heavily skewed towards the IP sector, as you would expect, but that in and of itself is concerning, as the IP sector usually weathers economic turbulence better than many others.
I don’t think it is particularly realistic to compare 2026 to the pandemic as, for the most part, job numbers recovered very quickly after the spate of lockdowns. The more interesting comparison is the financial crisis, where, in the UK, unemployment rose from 5.2% in 2007 to 8.4% by 2011. Before 2008 the UK economy grew significantly with an average growth rate of 2.5% between 2000-2007 – we’ve not hit those numbers anytime since, with the exception of 2021 when coming out of Covid. In 2006, the UK’s economy was bigger than China.
All of this preamble is to say that the current unemployment rate is 5.2% so it’s at the same level as it was when the economy was on a relative hot streak, growth was good and it had grown every year since 1992 and yet the unemployment levels were about the same as they are now. I’ve taken the figures above from the ONS, econmicshelp.org and countryeconomy.com.
Graduate recruitment is certainly very different now compared with 2007. I found this BBC article from the middle of 2012 reporting that the number of UK graduates in jobs like cleaning or bar work had doubled in the preceding five years. The number of graduates has significantly changed as well rising from circa 400,000 in 2007 to 800,000 in 2025 (according to a myriad of sources).
It might be fair to say then that the job market is not the toughest it has been in the last 15 or so years but it is certainly the worst it has been in a very long time with the exception of the pandemic period (and a lot of people kept their jobs then because of furlough policies). The unemployment rate in 2019 was 3.8% which was the lowest it had been since 1975.
To move away from data and to express some opinions – I think the graduate job market is very tough, but the number of graduates is a significant factor in this. If you graduate from a highly ranked university with a good grade, you will mostly still be okay. If you didn’t, it’s likely much more difficult because companies have more choice and decision making will skew towards highly ranked universities and good grades. Having said that, for sectors like IP where graduate intake has never been particularly high, because it’s a small sector, this will not apply. Most of the candidates who apply and get interviews will have gone to highly ranked universities, many of them will have a Masters or PhD and there are currently even fewer places than the norm so even with excellent academic credentials it might not make any difference.
I don’t think AI is a major factor yet on positive job numbers or lack thereof, but it may be in years to come. We can argue about that, but I think it’s an easy answer to blame AI for unemployment figures when I think there are broader economic and geopolitical factors at play (and evidence that some sectors that have potentially made AI related lay-offs have reversed course).
Another interesting trend we’ve noticed in IP but that also seems to be the case in the broader job market is middle-management job losses. From an IP perspective that has been Senior Associates and Salaried Partners losing their jobs and the work they handled being carved up by Equity Partners plus bumping up the charge-out rate of newly/recently qualified Associates. It’s a short-term fix in all likelihood; I think in some cases economic circumstances have exposed cracks in long term planning and a reliance on a too limited portfolio of clients. There’s an old adage in the recruitment industry that the best time to sell is when you’re busy and the worst is when you’re not because by then it’s too late. I think this certainly holds for a few firms in the IP sector and those firms that have continued to grow, in my opinion, seem to be those that have had well-formed client acquisition strategies. Their businesses are more diverse, so losing a client is less impactful and when work drops off, they have a workforce much more equipped to find alternatives.
My arguments here have been leading to the conclusion that there are jobs out there, that you can get, but at certain levels it is much more challenging than the overall data might suggest. I also don’t know if it’s going to get better or worse – Nvidia’s financial performance could suggest that an AI bubble may not burst any time soon; the world may become more stable in the next year in a more positive reading of geopolitics, who knows maybe the UK will reverse Brexit? On a more pessimistic reading where the job market continues to deteriorate, I think even more flexibility will be required from candidates.
Many candidates we speak to understandably have goals they want to achieve in a new job and if they are in employment that’s okay. The main issue with achieving those goals, assuming a level of better economic conditions realism, is that they may take a great deal longer to accomplish. Finding an alternative job that meets all of the criteria could be a future and not current aspiration. However, I see real issues and have concerns for those looking for a job who don’t currently have one. Significantly more flexibility may be required in order to find a job, any job, in the sector they want to work in. We have a lot of pushback, from unemployed candidates on the idea of relocation or not being able to work remotely for example. By the time they come to the conclusion that they may need to move their thinking they have been out of work for quite some time and there are more flexible candidates entering the job market. I appreciate uprooting your life to move jobs, particularly if internationally, can be extremely difficult but in some circumstances, I think candidates haven’t appreciated that the decision might be a binary one between continuing a career or continuing to live where you are. This goes for other factors too – type of work; what the firm looks like; undefined career progression, etc. These are important, of course, but it may be a luxury to factor them in too heavily. Interestingly people are much more willing to compromise on salary expectations but that is also the area where they likely need to compromise the least. All of this applies to graduates as well; we have multiple calls with graduates wanting to enter the IP profession who will only apply to firms in London, where their odds may be increased considering other locations in the UK and internationally.
It is a very tough job market and that it is not as bad as it might have been in the past is cold comfort. As ever, the way to navigate it is to be more flexible than most, more persistent and more creative. We do have jobs that many of you would be suitable for, but they may not be what you imagined doing when you first started your search.