The Guardian’s recruitment platform Guardian Jobs is closing after more than 20 years in response to a “fundamental shift” in the UK’s jobs landscape.
The Guardian launched one of the UK’s first online recruitment sites in 1996 and Guardian.co.uk/jobs went live five years later. By 2004 it had 460,000 unique users each month.
Recruiters have now been informed that Guardian Jobs is winding down operations from 4 September, according to posts on Linkedin.
Global chief advertising officer Imogen Fox said in a statement: “Over the last few decades, Guardian Jobs has successfully matched high quality jobseekers with the highest calibre vacancies, specialising in sectors that truly make a difference.
“Whilst bringing people together, they helped fund our independent journalism.
“While the business has been managed very well by the team, the UK recruitment landscape has fundamentally shifted lately with vacancies at their lowest level in five years, and we have taken the difficult decision to close Guardian Jobs.
“Every active advertising campaign or job listing will be fully delivered.
“Guardian Jobs has helped thousands of people find their perfect role for decades, from the start of the internet and beyond. We are deeply appreciative of the impact the team has made to the Guardian during its lifetime.
“We would like to thank all those who have worked with us over the years and wish all job seekers every success in finding their perfect role.”
At the time of writing there remain almost 15,000 job listings on the site across key categories including media, education, government, charities, marketing, social care and arts. Media companies using the site include Conde Nast, Hearst UK, Reach and Future.
Until 2011 The Guardian produced bulky print supplements – Media on Mondays, Education on Tuesdays and Society on Wednesdays – boosted by job adverts that helped fund the newspaper’s journalism.
The publisher said at the time that recruitment advertisers were “increasingly looking for employer branding and capturing the attention of ‘passive’ job seekers, which is now more powerfully achieved in the main paper”.
The only mention of Guardian Jobs revenue in the publisher’s latest annual report for 2024/25 was to show it is included in “other revenue” alongside content licensing, events and philanthropic funding.
Recent surveys from the Association of Online Publishers and Deloitte have shown a drop in recruitment revenue among a sample of 13 digital publishers. The year-on-year drop was above 90% in two quarters last year.
BBC News reported in August that the number of job vacancies in the UK totalled 707,000 in May to July, the lowest number in more than five years.
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