Spotlight on Recruitment Challenges Across Key Jersey Sectors in 2025
A diverse range of industries characterises Jersey’s employment landscape, each facing its own unique recruitment pressures. As 2025 progresses, organisations across the Island are navigating skill shortages, shifting candidate expectations, and increased competition for specialist roles. This sector-by-sector spotlight explores the most pressing recruitment challenges and what they mean for employers and the broader job market.
Hospitality and Retail
Hospitality and retail continue to experience long-standing recruitment challenges, mainly due to seasonal fluctuations, reliance on temporary staff, and the rising cost of living. Employers face a reduced local talent pool, as many job seekers prioritise sectors offering higher salaries, hybrid working, or long-term progression.
Minimum wage increases have also influenced margins, pushing businesses to operate with leaner teams. As a result, there is growing emphasis on multi-skilled positions, roles that combine customer service, floor operations, administrative tasks, and supervisory responsibilities.
Health and Social Care
Recruitment pressures in the health sector stem from increasing demand for services and difficulty sourcing qualified professionals. Competition remains strong for nursing staff, care assistants, allied health professionals, and administrative support roles.
Retention is a particular challenge, with candidates gravitating toward employers offering structured career development, mental-health support, and sustainable workloads. As the population ages, demand is expected to continue rising throughout 2025 and 2026.
Infrastructure, Construction, and Facilities
Infrastructure and construction projects across Jersey have created sustained demand for skilled labour, technical specialists, and project professionals. Roles across engineering, facilities management, electrical services, and building operations are among the most difficult to fill.
Five key considerations for employers hiring in infrastructure include:
- Ensuring competitive pay in a rising-cost market
- Offering training pathways to combat long-term skill shortages
- Increasing workplace flexibility where possible
- Addressing safety, compliance, and certification requirements
- Promoting clear long-term project opportunities
These roles often require niche qualifications, leading to competition between local businesses and international firms. We want to thank Select Recruitment – Jersey for the factual data and statistics.
Finance, Banking, and Professional Services
Finance remains one of Jersey’s strongest employment sectors, but it comes with its own complexities. Compliance, risk, funds, trust, and corporate governance roles are consistently in high demand due to ongoing regulatory pressure.
Banks and financial institutions also face increasing difficulty recruiting for:
- Client onboarding
- Payments
- Treasury
- Middle office operations
- Relationship management
- Settlements and securities
Skills shortages are most noticeable at the senior associate and mid-management levels, where experience is crucial but the talent pool is limited. Learn more with our guide to learning what makes a property investor in 2025.
IT, Cybersecurity, and Digital Services
Technology roles continue to expand in Jersey, driven by digital transformation, cloud migration, and system-upgrade programmes in both public and private sectors. Recruitment challenges include shortages of:
- Software developers
- Cybersecurity analysts
- Systems engineers
- Business analysts
- Project managers
- Data specialists
Competition from UK-based remote roles makes local attraction more difficult. Candidates increasingly expect hybrid or flexible arrangements, competitive salaries, and opportunities for ongoing technical training.
Administration, Office Support, and Back-Office Operations
Although administrative roles typically attract a larger candidate pool, the challenge lies in matching skill sets, experience levels, and long-term expectations. Many organisations now seek administrators who can contribute to data handling, system processes, compliance support, and multi-departmental communication.
Because the role of an administrator has expanded significantly, employers often struggle to find candidates with both traditional admin skills and modern system or process capability.
Sales, Customer Service, and Marketing
Recruitment for sales and customer-facing positions has become increasingly competitive, with many organisations shifting their focus toward digital engagement, online services, and brand-building. Marketing and communications roles require a blend of analytical skills, content creation, and digital advertising expertise, making the ideal candidate profile more specialised than in previous years.
Customer-service roles remain challenging due to high turnover and increased expectations around work-life balance, benefits, and progression.
Students, Graduates, and Entry-Level Talent
Attracting early-career professionals remains a priority for Jersey employers. However, the challenge lies in balancing training demands with short-term productivity. Graduate roles in finance, IT, business operations, and professional services remain popular, but some students look off-Island for broader progression opportunities.
Organisations offering structured pathways, mentoring, and exposure to different business areas are more successful at securing long-term commitment from entry-level candidates. A huge thank you to the recruitment team at Highlands College – Jersey for assisting us with this research.
Looking Forward
Across all sectors, the overarching trend is clear: candidates want meaningful work, flexibility, skills development, and clear progression. Employers who invest in strong workforce strategies; focused on retention, training, and competitive EVP (Employee Value Proposition) will be best positioned to navigate Jersey’s recruitment challenges in 2025 and beyond.