They cut 16,000 jobs. Not project managers, their demand rose

UK vacancies fell 16,000 in a week while project manager adverts rose 289; the project manager median fell again, to £50,000; a £20bn framework for buying contract project people went to planning stage.

Issue 3. 24 September 2026.

The number

When employers cut, they cut project people last, and this week they did not cut them at all.

▼ 15,803 fewer live vacancies in the UK this week. ▲ 289 more live project manager adverts. Project roles are now 5.9% of every vacancy in the country.

The whole market. Live vacancies fell from 651,385 to 635,582 in 7 days, 2.4%, and 6.5% in 9 days. Project manager adverts rose from 37,208 to 37,497. Project roles are now 5.9% of every vacancy, after 5.5% and 5.7%. Three readings, one direction: employers are cutting everything except project roles.

Pay. The average advertised project manager salary is £62,207 for August, up 8.9% on a year ago. Unchanged this week.

This week's adverts. 191 project roles posted between 18 and 24 September. Last week 204, 2 weeks ago 191. First clean comparison, no advert in both weeks. Flat, not falling.

The crowd. The most applied-for advert was permanent: a project coordinator at £38,000 to £45,000, hybrid, east London, 213 applicants. The median advert has 7.

Movement

Permanent, posted this week

Project manager pay. The median fell for the second week running: £60,000, £55,000, £50,000, on 79 adverts each week. The top of the middle half dropped from £70,000 to £60,400. Two weeks is not 4, but the direction is the same twice on the same sample size.

Why. The whole-market average is still rising, so the adverts arriving this month are cheaper than the stock already live. That usually means agencies posting mid-market roles. Three agencies posted 45 of this week's 191.

The small rungs. PMO up £15,000 on 5 adverts, programme manager down £20,000 on 6. Signals, nothing more.

Contract, posted this week

Day rates. 27 contract adverts, so a signal. The project manager rate held at £463 exactly. The all-rungs median rose to £500 because 6 programme manager contracts arrived at £600 and above, 2 of them at £700 to £850 for ERP programme leads. Contract is 14.1% of adverts, the same as last week.

Where the roles are. 37,497 live project manager adverts across the UK. London 11,739, 31.3%, down from 31.7%. South East 4,734, North West 3,819, South West 2,977, West Midlands 2,925. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland together 4,019, 10.7%. The North West gained 66 in a week while London lost 68.

Who is hiring. AECOM 1,500 live project manager adverts, up 152 in a week, the largest move by any employer in 3 weeks. AtkinsRéalis 602, down 43. Stantec 589, WSP 465, Amazon 464. Same 5 names; the gap between first and second has doubled. Of this week's new adverts, agencies posted most: Hays 20, Reed 14, Ernest Gordon 11, Brandon James 11. The 213-applicant advert was an agency posting for an unnamed client.

Hybrid and remote. Hybrid 36.6% of adverts, up from 29.9%, the highest in 3 weeks. Remote 4.2%, down from 9.8%, the lowest. The hybrid rise is on 70 adverts and is real; the remote fall is on 8 and is not yet.

Cleared roles. 22 project, programme and PMO roles asking for security clearance in this week's alerts, 14 at DV level. Day rates printed: £400 to £450 for a planner, £500 to £640 for a DV infrastructure project manager, £550 for a scheduler, £600 to £800 for DV project delivery, £750 for a transformation lead. That is £100 to £300 a day above the £463 median. Permanent: a national security senior project manager at £75,000 to £90,000 plus DV bonus; eDV delivery roles at £95,000 to £150,000. Basingstoke, Cheltenham, Bristol, Portsmouth. 22 is a signal; the row runs every week from here.

Training adverts posing as vacancies. 36 this week, 15.9% of adverts with a project title. Last week 75, 26.9%. The lowest so far. Excluded from every figure in this issue.

Applications. The median advert had 7 applications by Wednesday. 7 adverts had more than 50, down from 13. The top 5: a permanent project coordinator at £38,000 to £45,000, 213; an assistant project manager contract at £375 a day, 89; a financial services project manager contract at £626 a day, 60; a permanent senior project manager at £90,000, 58; a data centre project manager contract at £750 a day, 55. All 5 printed the money, named hybrid and were in London.

Signal

What the 191 adverts ask for, as a share of adverts.

Methods and qualifications

Certificates. PRINCE2 first for the third week. APM moved ahead of PMP and Agile, reversing last week. In the Civil Service APM is first by a distance: 30.4% of live project vacancies name it, PMP 4.3%. The stable finding across 3 weeks: PRINCE2 and APM together are in about 1 advert in 5, and nothing else comes close.

Degree. Back from 24.5% to 20.4%. Last week's jump was ordinary week-to-week movement.

What is climbing. Construction: 35.1% of all adverts and 40.3% of project manager adverts, up from 27.9% and 37.3%. NEC contracts 8.4%, Microsoft Project 11.0%, up from 6.4%. The 3 move together because they are in the same adverts. The built environment is more than a third of the private project market this week. Hybrid 36.6%, up 6.7 points.

What is not moving. Stakeholder management 71.2%, the most named requirement of any kind for the third week. Budget ownership 41.9% of adverts and 52.7% of project manager adverts, down from 49.5% and 57.5%. Risk management 17.3%. Business case 2.1% and benefits management 2.1%, against 34.8% and 21.7% in the Civil Service. AI 5.8%, down from 8.3%, on 11 adverts. Security clearance 3.7%, on 7.

The Civil Service this week

The count. 46 live vacancies with project, programme, PMO or portfolio in the title, 69 posts, 18 new since last Wednesday. Last week's 161 counted every vacancy the search returned, including prison offender-programme posts that are not project roles. On the same basis as this table, last week was 52 vacancies and 76 posts, so the count fell 11.5%.

By grade. Grade 7 12, SEO 12, HEO 4, EO 2, Grade 6 1, SCS 2. Grade 7 project posts are advertised at a median £57,053 to £67,843; SEO at £46,040.

New this week. Head of Infrastructure Delivery and PMO at DCMS, Grade 6, £64,903 to £82,556, closing 4 October. A Grade 7 vaccine programme operations lead at UKHSA, £60,494 to £70,566. An assistant director of portfolio controls for the AUKUS programme at the Ministry of Defence, SEO. 2 regional project managers at the Mining Remediation Authority in the North East. The 2 HM Land Registry programme director posts at £95,000 to £100,000 close on 27 September.

Homes England. 6 open, from an assistant capital projects manager at £34,487 to Head of Programme Delivery at £81,443. A full ladder in one agency.

Pipeline

Find a Tender notices from the last 7 days that will need project people. Open tenders hire on award. Planning notices hire in a year.

Awarded

No awards over £5m matched this week's search. That is 3 weeks without a large award, which is normal for September. The autumn awards arrive from November.

Open for bids

NHS Shared Business Services, Public Sector Construction Consultancy framework. £2.3bn. Deadline 27 November. The framework the NHS and other public bodies use to buy project management, cost and design services for building work. Suppliers who win a place hire project managers to fill call-offs from spring 2027.

Police Service of Northern Ireland, core IT managed services. £360m. No deadline published yet. A managed service replacement across the force's operational systems, with a transition programme on both sides.

Salford City Council, technical and highways works framework. £300m. Deadline 4 November. Reopens at years 3 and 6, so a supplier who misses this round gets another.

Medway Council, highways infrastructure contract. £110m. One contract for an 845km network, the Medway Tunnel and 406 bridges. A long-term programme team on both sides.

Thames Water, White Horse Reservoir independent technical adviser. £40m. The largest new water asset in the south of England for 40 years, and a 10-year appointment.

Natural Resources Wales, forest infrastructure construction and maintenance framework 2027. £40m. Deadline 21 October.

Mining Remediation Authority, construction, environmental and technical professional services framework. £9.4m. Deadline 6 November. Small, but the same authority is advertising 2 regional project managers this week.

Still open. Eastern Procurement's £1.06bn heating, electrical and decarbonisation framework closes 21 October. Southern Housing's £200m fire remedial frameworks close 14 October.

Coming

Government Commercial Agency, Workforce Solution 2. £20bn planning notice. The framework through which the whole public sector buys contingent labour, recruitment outsourcing and statements of work. Every interim project manager, PMO analyst and programme director on a day rate in a department or an NHS body is bought through this framework or the one before it. Its renewal sets the terms, the margins and the suppliers of the public sector contract market for 4 years. Bid for it and you are bidding to be the route to market. Contract through it and the agencies that win a place are the ones to be registered with by next summer.

Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, Security and Resilience Framework. £2.7bn planning notice. Individuals and teams for security, stabilisation and governance work worldwide. Programme managers who can be cleared and can travel.

London Borough of Newham, housing repairs, compliance, building safety and capital investment programme. £288m to £416m over 10 years. Market engagement now, procurement to follow. A client-side programme office for a decade.

Home Office, hosting capability supplier. £183m. Award with competition under an existing framework. One supplier for hosting, engineering and transformation across the Home Office technology estate.

Quality Trusted Solutions, consultants framework. £150m. 12 lots, and lot 10 is project management. QTS is the NHS-owned estates consultancy, so this is health estates work.

Still at planning stage. Camden's £500m Wendling Estate regeneration and the Home Office's £90.9m Life in the UK test service.

The pattern. The largest notices are frameworks, and frameworks hire twice: when a supplier wins a place, and when the first call-off arrives. Workforce Solution 2 is different in kind. It does not buy project work; it buys project people. Its award in 2027 decides which agencies carry public sector contract roles for the rest of the decade.

The move

If you're applying this week: put a salary figure and the word hybrid where the reader can see them. The 5 most applied-for adverts all printed the money and named hybrid, and 36.6% of adverts now do. If your CV or profile does not say what you cost and where you will work, you are harder to shortlist than the people who do.

If you're bidding: the NHS Shared Business Services construction consultancy framework, £2.3bn, closes 27 November. It is the largest open notice this week that buys project management directly, and a place on it is 4 years of call-offs across the NHS estate.

If you're hiring or running a PMO: APM is named in 30.4% of live Civil Service project vacancies and 8.9% of private ones, and it moved ahead of PMP in the private market this week. If your team delivers into government, APM is the qualification the client recognises, and it is the one most private-sector teams have not got.

Method

Salary history, regional counts and top employers come from Adzuna, a job search engine that collects adverts from most UK job boards and employer career sites and removes the duplicates. It is the source the Office for National Statistics uses for its own vacancy estimates. Figures in this issue: 12 months to August 2026 for salary history; live counts as of 24 September 2026. Project roles as a share of all vacancies uses Adzuna's count of every live advert on the same day.

Advert content, the skills and qualifications employers ask for, comes from Reed.co.uk, one of the largest UK job boards, where the full text of each advert is available. Adverts posted 18 to 24 September 2026. 191 adverts across the 4 rungs after training adverts are excluded.

Civil Service figures come from Civil Service Jobs, the government's own recruitment site. Live vacancies with project, programme, PMO or portfolio in the title on 23 September 2026. 46 vacancies, 69 posts. From this issue the count is by title; earlier issues counted every vacancy the search returned, and the restated figures for last week are given in the text.

Cleared role counts: SecurityClearedJobs.com job alerts, week to 24 September 2026. 10 daily alerts, 22 distinct project, programme and PMO roles after graduate and placement adverts are removed.

Pipeline figures come from Find a Tender, the government's official register of public contracts above threshold across all 4 nations. Notices published 17 to 23 September 2026. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Notices under £1m are excluded.

Percentages are rounded to 1 decimal place. Under 30 adverts is a signal, not a fact, and is marked as such.

The PM Index is free, and so are these.

Would you pass PRINCE2 today?
4 official timed papers tell you in an hour. https://jamesbailey.uk/exams

Bold, italic and bullets for LinkedIn,
with the real character count. https://jamesbailey.uk/format

Education, experience, skills or exposure:
14 questions tell you which one is blocking your next move. https://jamesbailey.uk/check

Get every issue by email, free