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Welcome to our recruiter insights for January, with the latest facts and figures from the labour market. This update is based on the jobs posted on CharityJob during October to December 2025.
Continued growth in candidate demand for jobs
We again saw year-on-year growth from candidates compared to 2024, with November reaching record levels of clicks on the ‘Apply’ button (CoA) per job posted, surpassing the previous record of September 2025.
The overall average number of clicks on the ‘Apply’ button was up by 25% year-on-year and up by 1% on the previous quarter.
December also saw record figures for candidate demand, compared to the same month in previous years. This suggests that candidates were keeping an eye on the job market over the festive period, although it remains sluggish.
Candidate numbers remained up on last year
Despite a drop in active candidates and candidate registrations compared to the previous quarter (as expected, due to the slower December period), both remained significantly up compared to the previous year.
Active candidates were up 22% on the previous year, and candidate registrations up 35%.
Although December figures affected the quarter-on-quarter comparisons, December itself saw candidate registrations in-line with the peak of 2024, with more than 11,000 new registrations.
Decline in number of jobs posted
CharityJob saw a decline in jobs posted, compared to both the previous quarter (as expected due to seasonality) and the previous year.
The challenges within the labour market continue to affect the number of available roles, but trends for Q4 2025 mimicked those seen towards the end of 2024, as the graph below shows.
Policy, advocacy, governance & campaigns job category showed the most growth
The category with the biggest gap between the number of roles available and the number of clicks on the ‘Apply’ button was, once again, fundraising. Demand for fundraising roles was 35% lower than the overall demand for jobs.
The category with the most roles available this quarter was business services, with more than 2,200 jobs posted. However, this category, along with finance, decreased the most compared with the previous year (-16%).
The category to grow the most was policy, advocacy, governance & campaigns, with an increase of 2% in the number of jobs posted compared to the previous year.
Demand (measured in clicks on the ‘Apply’ button) for admin roles and for policy, advocacy, governance & campaigns roles reached more than 70.
Finance had the highest growth in demand from the previous year, increasing by 30%.
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Tags: charity recruitment, charity sector, job market, recruitment trends
