Redundancy riptide: white collar job seekers may have to relocate to regional cities to secure work

By Katherine Steiner-Dicks Last updated Oct 28, 2025

Image by Photo by Michael Spadoni via Pexels

SPECIAL REPORT

For most of 2025, the UK job market has been shedding employees at a faster pace than it was a year ago. October ONS employment data and news reports suggest companies are in a strong cost-cutting phase, driven by economic pressures and a desire to be more efficient. But once let go, where and when are all the white-collar workers going to secure new work? We look at some options

The number of people being made redundant or laid off in the UK was steadily rising for most of 2024 and has continued this trend far into 2025.

While the overall numbers aren’t at the extreme peak levels seen during the first year of the pandemic, the consistent increase signals that the UK job market is not showing signs of heating up with large companies continuing to shed staff to cut costs and improve efficiency.

Following analysis of ONS data, which tracks the redundancy rate per 1,000 employees across all sectors on a rolling three-month basis, the layoff pace is quickening.

The highest point last recorded was the period between April and June 2025 at 4.1 per 1,000 employees. This indicates that, as of mid-2025, companies are releasing staff at the highest rate seen in the entire data set.

The rate was only 3.1 just one year prior (Q4 2024). A jump of a full point (from 3.1 to 4.1) means layoffs have increased by about a third in the past year.

How long will the UK job market keep “cooling off”?

The rise in the redundancy rate is a classic sign of a cooling or weakening job market. Companies are cautious due to economic uncertainty, high costs (i.e., inflation, energy, wage demands), and, as general market trends suggest, a strategic shift toward new technology like AI.

The total number of job vacancies is likely to continue falling, which means that as more people are being laid off, it is becoming harder for them to find a new job quickly.

BBC Technology Editor Zoe Kleinman said in a LinkedIn post today,

There’s an absence of shock around today’s news that Amazon is planning to cut 14,000 jobs, with up to 30,000 at risk – 10% of its corporate work force. It’s brutal, and of course, horrible for those involved, but today’s big tech workers have largely grown used to lay-offs. The days of landing a role at a tech giant feeling like job-for-life territory seem to have long gone.

Kleinman said Amazon’s jobs page shows where their recruitment is currently focused:

Out of 10,000 job openings, only 20 are in PR and comms while there are over 1300 in operations, IT and support engineering.
And Amazon makes no bones about its ambitions for AI to further reduce its workforce – a warning for everyone in the world of work.

A freeze on new job vacancies is likely to continue until employers have solid ground to act upon following Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves’ 26 November Budget. Sadly, this uncertainty has been a hanging cloud over recruitment since employer national insurance rates rose earlier this year. Those looking for work may fall into the wait-and-see mode, as many employers may still be hesitant to make any new hires before the end of the year.

Following Treasury discussions first revealed by The Guardian, Reeves said she would “continue to support working people by keeping their taxes as low as possible”, but declined to repeat her earlier categorical commitment not to raise income tax, National Insurance or VAT, Business Matters reported.

The report stated, “Her carefully worded comments, made during a visit to Leeds on Friday, mark a shift from her stance in September, when she insisted Labour’s ‘manifesto commitments stand’.”

Redundancy riptide

There have been major layoffs in several high-profile sectors:

Financial Services: Banks like Lloyds and Santander are cutting staff due to automation and restructuring.

Retail/Hospitality: High-street businesses are struggling with higher costs, leading to staff cuts.

Public Sector: The NHS is reportedly facing a multi-billion-pound funding gap, which is forcing major redundancies in administrative and non-frontline roles.

There’s a redundancy riptide decimating Corporate Britain, and no one for certain knows where or even if new jobs will be available to keep food on the table for those affected.

However, one upcoming employee cull by a major employer signals a scary era for Britain’s white-collar workers.

The announcement by Nestlé to cut 16,000 jobs globally comes at an already spooky time of year: Halloween. Symbolic as it may be, these mass layoffs serve as a warning sign for the stability of white-collar employment across the UK.

Unite, one of the largest trade unions in the UK, has criticised the job cuts and said it would “respond robustly” to any British layoffs, according to a BBC report.

“Nestle is a profitable company, selling billions of produce every month. Job losses are simply unacceptable,” the union’s general secretary Sharon Graham said.

The report noted Nestle has sites in York, Halifax, Dalston and Tutbury, as well as staff at Buxton Water, which it owns.

This massive strategic overhaul alone represents approximately 6% of the consumer goods giant’s global staff, driven by new chief executive and 25-year-employee veteran Philipp Navratil, who stressed the need for the company to “change faster” in a shifting market.

Decimation of white-collar jobs

The core concern for professional employees lies in the distribution of these losses. While the company will axe around 4,000 manufacturing and supply chain jobs, the majority of the planned reductions—a substantial 12,000 roles—are focused on “white-collar professionals” across various business functions and geographies.

This sweeping action is intended to fast-track cost efficiency and operational effectiveness, yielding an aggressive target of around £940 million in annual savings by the end of 2027, according to food and beverage sector reports. It’s keeping results-driven institutional investors happy and off the CEO’s back.

Although Nestlé has stated that specific details regarding the impact on its UK operations—a market for household brands such as KitKat and Nescafé—remain officially unclear, the company confirmed that a consultation on the roles to be axed will take place “where applicable”.

Get news you can use every week.

Read The Freelance Informer newsletter. Sign up below:

FMCG: reengineering workforces

The sheer scale of this strategic cost-cutting exercise is an example of the erosion of corporate stability in the Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) sector. Nestlé, traditionally viewed as a blue-chip employer offering long-term stability, is now structurally re-engineering its workforce.

A cost-saving target approaching £1 billion confirms this is not merely a cyclical response to market weakness but a fundamental structural realignment, driven by the mandate for automation.

When a new CEO immediately prioritises such aggressive headcount reduction, it’s a sign technology-driven efficiency is an immediate, mandatory cost-control mechanism now fully embedded and replicated in many corporations’ executive strategy. Soon, new editions of Business School textbooks and case studies will need to create new chapters to explain this phenomenon.

The 12,000 professional positions being affected at Nestlé are precisely the types of administrative and middle-management roles that are often first targeted by AI-enabled software designed to perform routine cognitive tasks. This move by Nestlé is therefore likely to serve as a potent warning for anyone working at or being engaged by large UK corporations reliant on traditional administrative structures.

UK white-collar displacement

The corporate layoffs at Nestlé, for example, are occurring within an increasingly challenging macroeconomic environment in the UK, characterised by both a weakening labour market and accelerated technological displacement, as previously reported by The Freelance Informer.

The current wave of displacement is also particularly acute in highly skilled or “cognitive” professions due to the rapid deployment of Artificial Intelligence (AI). While traditionally, blue-collar sectors have accounted for the highest total job losses, analysis shows that the rate of white-collar displacement is now growing significantly faster, accelerating by 2.1 times compared to 2022 levels.

This structural squeeze confirms that AI is actively restructuring the middle layers of the professional workforce.

The vulnerability profile for these roles is entry-level white-collar jobs involving routine cognitive tasks—such as data entry, basic analysis, and administrative functions—are highly susceptible to automation. These functional roles are the very backbone of corporate shared service centres that restructuring exercises, such as Nestlé’s, often target for maximum efficiency gains.

AI disruption for educated women is a risk

AI disruption also presents a paradox regarding education and risk. Historically, automation primarily affected lower- and middle-skilled jobs. However, current analysis suggests a reversal, where highly educated workers are now much more exposed to AI disruption than those with fewer or no qualifications.

This is because modern AI technologies are estimated to have a much greater impact on the predominantly cognitive roles held by those with higher education levels.

For instance, data indicate that women employed in private-sector roles are exposed to roughly 3% more potential time savings from AI than men, partly because men are significantly overrepresented in more manual professions that are less exposed to current AI models.

This disparity highlights a structural mismatch: the market is now flooded with generalist white-collar talent from layoffs, yet employers continue to face severe skill gaps in niche, future-focused areas like AI, data science, and engineering.

This hiring trend depresses wages and job prospects for generalist roles, intensifying the need for immediate, targeted reskilling efforts.

How do you get a job?

For white-collar workers displaced by corporate restructuring, successful re-employment requires mandatory sector migration, moving functional expertise away from contracting industries and toward resilient growth hubs.

The UK’s bouncing sectors

Analysis of job creation trends reveals a stark divergence across UK industries. Unsurprisingly, the Consumer Goods and Services sector, which houses firms like Nestlé, reported a significant global contraction in job roles, shrinking by -14.64% in January 2025 compared to the latter half of 2024. This reinforces the necessity for displaced personnel to seek opportunities outside their previous industry, as competition for remaining roles in FMCG will be fierce.

Areas that saw professional services job vacancy growth in early 2025 included legal/regulatory positions, HR, procurement & supply chain, tech, and consultant roles.

This data suggests that the successful transition could involve the lateral movement of a professional function (e.g., HR) from a contracting industry (Consumer Goods) to an expanding one (Professional Services).

Specific functional roles, particularly in Procurement and Supply Chain, are identified as one of the fastest growing areas of demand across all industries within the UK, according to research by Robert Walters.

The sentiment was echoed by Lucia Salvati, Marketing Executive & Project Lead at freelancer jobs platform Proteams, in a recent call with The Freelance Informer. Freelancers are in high demand on their freelancer vetted platform for procurement and Pharma R&D projects.

This is highly relevant to displaced Nestlé personnel with logistics or purchasing expertise.

UK White-Collar Job Creation & Contraction (January 2025 vs. H2 2024 Average); Source: Robert Walters

Sectoral contraction indicates severe competition for remaining roles.	Relevance for Displaced Staff
Professional Services Firms	High absorption potential for Finance, HR, Legal, and Compliance functions.
Real Estate & Construction	Strong potential for procurement and project management roles.
Healthcare	Opportunities in administrative, financial, and regulatory support.
Consumer Goods & Services	Sectoral contraction; indicates severe competition for remaining roles.

Regional resilience: Decentralisation of professional capital

Opportunities for displaced professional staff are increasingly found outside the capital, demonstrating that high-value jobs are decentralising across the nation. The financial and related professional services industry in the UK employs nearly 2.5 million people, with two-thirds of those roles located outside London, according to The City UK.

Over the past decade, this decentralisation has accelerated, with more than half of the sector’s job growth occurring outside the capital.

Key growth hotspots include:

The North West: This is the second largest region for industry employment after London, hosting nearly 300,000 jobs, and recording a decade-long growth rate of 3.2%.
The West Midlands: Centred on Birmingham, this region saw a 3.4% decade-long growth rate.
Northern Ireland: This region reported the highest growth rate at 3.8%

Major professional employment centres beyond London, each hosting over 20,000 jobs, include Manchester, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Bristol, Leeds, Cardiff, and Belfast.

These regional figures suggest that corporate redundancy in traditional hubs may involuntarily fuel the regional economy, as highly skilled workers are forced to look beyond traditional London-centric employment models, strengthening secondary UK cities.

The Nestlé redundancy news illustrates the challenges facing the UK’s professional workforce: corporate structure is rapidly yielding to automation and cost efficiency, leaving thousands of highly educated workers exposed to job displacement.

The government should be calling for the successful transition of displaced white-collar staff to avoid mass unemployment. That may mean immediate sector migration, moving functional expertise from contracting industries like consumer goods to high-demand areas such as professional services, pharma and healthcare.

To simply make ends meet while job-hunting, many of these experienced people, who may be at the managerial level, often in their late 40s, 50s or even early 60s, may have no choice but to start freelancing. If Chancellor Rachel Reeves genuinely wants the economy to grow and people to rely less on benefits, the Labour government must introduce meaningful incentives that make self-employment easier, not harder.