REVEALED: These are the jobs Brits are Googling the most

Recruitment experts at Smart Recruit Online have analysed 12 months’ worth of Google Search and Trends data to uncover the most Googled jobs in the world for 2021, and why this might be the case.

Across the UK

Broken down to just the UK, and we can see that teaching assistant jobs were the most searched overall, with more than 273,000 Google searches completed in the last 12 months. This search spiked in May 2021, likely as this is the last month you can register before the summer.

The top 5 jobs searched for across the UK include gig economy roles such as cleaner and driver jobs. There was a significant candidate shortage in these mainstream, lower-skilled roles over the last few years, which has led to salary inflations and a more competitive and incentivised market. Coupled with the 2020 nationwide furlough scheme which left many out of work, these jobs may have very well seemed like the “easiest” to branch into with little training.

Medical roles such as counsellor and nursing also feature within the top ten, proving that even after the difficulties these professions have encountered during the pandemic, there is still a human interest in these healthcare roles. More than 78,000 Brits searched for each of these jobs in the last year across the UK.

Looking at the different regions of the UK, teaching assistant was the most popular job searched for in England, while in Scotland and N.Ireland, driver jobs were the most in demand. Almost 12,000 searches for driver jobs in Scotland, and just over 3,000 in N.Ireland. In Wales, moulder jobs were the most searched for, with 10,350 searches in the last year.

Looking across the globe

With recent reports suggesting an extreme driver shortage the world over, and trying to close that gap through extreme salary rises, it’s no surprise that ‘driver jobs’ is the top job searched globally with over 1.2 million searches. In the UK, HGV drivers could earn up to £3,400 per month, while in the USA, one company was reported to offer $100,000 plus bonuses to potential drivers. The top country searching for driving jobs was South Africa, where a driver shortage can be linked to early retirements and lockdown restrictions making it more difficult to be licensed. Searches for driver jobs hit 128,500 in South Africa in the past year.

Engineering jobs make up the top three globally, with both mechanical and engineering jobs seeing close to a million searches per year, with other highly skilled careers such as graphic designer and accountant rounding out the top five with more than 800,000 searches for each. Canadians are searching for accounting jobs the most (54,201 searches), while it’s India that searches for engineering jobs (567,200) the most.

Translator jobs were the most commonly searched for globally, by no less than 33 countries. This job is searched for the most in Central and South America, with 4,400 Brazillians searching for these roles the most in the last year. Second to Brazil is Mexico, where the job was searched for 3,990 times, while both Argentina (1,680) and Chile (600) featured in the top ten searches for this job.

While translator jobs were searched by most countries, it is driver jobs that were searched the most, with more than 336,880 searches from 21 countries.

On the continent

Back in Europe, the UK searched the most for teaching assistants – 273,700 times – and we were the only nation to search for that job. The second highest search volume was in Switzerland, where chauffeur jobs tipped 43,200 searches, while Greece took up the third highest searches for lawyer jobs (28,800).

The most commonly searched job across Europe was for translator jobs, where there were over 11,400 searches across 11 countries including Italy, Portugal and Russia.