Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment she has made of trends in the level of job vacancies in key professions within her Department’s responsibilities, including contractor organisations.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) publishes information on the number of vacancies at UK-level, by industry, and by size of business as part of the vacancies and jobs in the UK release. Using that data, we see that in August to October 2025 there were 15,000 vacancies in arts, entertainment and recreation, 33,000 vacancies in information and communication and 76,000 vacancies in accommodation and food service activities. Parts of these industries are included in DCMS sector definitions.

Compared to August to October 2024:

• Arts, entertainment and recreation vacancies are down 14.0%

• Accommodation and food service activities vacancies are down 16.5%

• Information and communication vacancies are down 13.5%

DCMS uses a more granular industry classification (4-digit Standard Industrial Classification codes) to define our sectors and ONS vacancy data is not publicly available at this level.

DCMS publishes official statistics in development estimating the number of vacancies, alongside skills shortages and skills gaps, based on the Department for Education’s (DfE) Employer Skills Survey. Two regular data releases have been published so far: DCMS Sectors Skills Shortages and Skills Gaps: 2019 and DCMS Sector Skills Shortages and Skills Gaps: 2022, UK, as well as additional analysis for the Creative Industries. The 2022 data showed that 25.5% of DCMS Sectors businesses in the UK had at least one vacancy open at the time of the survey. This was significantly higher than All Sectors (23.2%).

Further insights into labour demand are provided in the ONS’s Labour demand volumes by Standard Occupation Classification (SOC 2020), UK dataset, which includes official statistics in development sourced from Textkernel data. DCMS has published additional estimates by SOC code for the Creative Industries using the DfE’s Employer Skills Survey.