Wales entered 2025 with its highest employment rate on record (75.8 per cent) and the lowest unemployment since 2004 (2.9 per cent). Yet employers still posted 38,500 live vacancies across the principality in March 2025, according to the Office for National Statistics’ regional job-advert tracker – a rise of 11 per cent on the same month a year earlier. Below are the ten roles that appear most frequently in Welsh job adverts, what they pay on average, and why they are scarcer here than in other parts of the UK.
| Rank | Occupation | Typical Welsh salary* | Why demand is surging |
| 1 | Registered nurse (all bands) | £28–£41 k | NHS Wales carried 3,690 unfilled nursing posts in late 2024 — a 10 % vacancy rate. Welsh Government is expanding training places by £283 m this year, but retirements still outpace graduates. |
| 2 | Health-care support worker | £21–£25 k | Ageing rural populations in Powys and Gwynedd mean community and care-home staffing gaps wider than UK average. |
| 3 | Software developer / engineer | £35–£55 k | Cardiff Capital Region’s fintech cluster and Newport’s semiconductor corridor (anchored by IQE and the new Compound Semiconductor Foundry) advertised 1,900 coding roles in 2024 – up 23 %. |
| 4 | Cyber-security analyst | £40–£65 k | Welsh data-centre projects powering offshore wind have raised threat levels; the UK cyber sector added 2,700 jobs last year and Wales hosts the National Digital Exploitation Centre in Ebbw Vale. |
| 5 | Wind-turbine technician | £32–£45 k | Mega projects like Morlais (Anglesey) and Pen y Cymoedd onshore require hundreds of O&M staff; local colleges cannot yet supply enough Level 3 qualified engineers. |
| 6 | HGV driver / logistics operative | £32–£40 k | Post-Brexit trade flows via Holyhead and Milford Haven plus Amazon’s Swansea fulfilment centre have pushed Welsh haulage adverts up 18 % year-on-year. |
| 7 | Qualified teacher (Welsh-medium) | £31–£47 k | The Cymraeg 2050 strategy aims for one million Welsh speakers; 650 extra bilingual teachers must be recruited by 2027, creating regional shortages, especially in Ceredigion and Carmarthenshire. |
| 8 | Skilled construction trades (retrofit & MMC) | £30–£42 k | The Optimised Retrofit Programme funds 26,000 social-housing upgrades; employers cite “acute” gaps in heat-pump installers and on-site digital-construction foremen. |
| 9 | Manufacturing technician (semiconductors & life-sciences) | £29–£38 k | Newport’s compound-semi cluster and Wrexham’s pharma plants (e.g., Wockhardt) ramp up shifts to meet export orders. Vacancy postings rose 17 % in 2024. |
| 10 | Hospitality supervisor / chef-de-partie | £24–£32 k | Record domestic tourism to Pembrokeshire and the Brecon Beacons (12.1 m overnight trips in 2024, up 9 %) fuels an enduring skills squeeze over summer. |
*Median advertised salary range, ONS Textkernel data, Q4 2024.
Why Wales – and not elsewhere?
- Strategic public investment
Welsh Government leans on big, long-horizon schemes – the £1.2 bn South Wales Metro, £500 m Tech Valleys and £30 bn Celtic Freeport – that cluster vacancies in rail, energy and advanced manufacturing inside the nation’s borders. Those projects have no direct English equivalents of similar scale and timeline. - Demography and language policy
Wales’ over-65 share (22 %) tops the UK mean, so health-care hiring pressure is structurally higher. Simultaneously, the statutory push for Welsh-medium education creates a language-specific teacher market absent in England or Scotland. - Geographical asset base
The Cambrian coast’s world-class wind resource lures OEMs (Siemens Gamesa, RWE) to build servicing hubs in port towns such as Mostyn, meaning turbine-tech adverts spike here rather than, say, London. - Emergent tech clusters
Newport’s compound-semiconductor ecosystem – the only one in Europe operating at commercial wafer volumes – sucks in clean-room technicians and process engineers whose skills are niche and non-transferable to many English plants.
How the numbers break down
- 38,500 live vacancies in Wales at March 2025;
- +11 % year-on-year rise versus a 3 % fall across the UK.
- Health & social care: 9,800 openings (25 % of total) – highest of any sector.
- Digital & cyber: 5,600 openings, double the 2019 figure.
- Green energy & construction retrofit: 3,200 ads, up 31 % in 12 months.
(ONS Textkernel series and StatsWales vacancy dashboard.)
Landing one of these roles
- Target local employers – NHS Wales Jobs, Teaching Vacancies Wales, Celtic Freeport portal and FinTech Wales career hub publish region-first adverts.
- Map your credentials to role-specific shortages: e.g., NERS Level 3 exercise referral for care-worker fitness posts or GWO working-at-height for turbine techs.
- Build bilingual competence – a conversational grasp of Cymraeg lifts teacher and nursing applications to the top of shortlists in many unitary authorities.
- Show continuous CPD – micro-credentials in cyber essentials, retrofit coordination or semiconductor clean-room safety now feature in many shortlisting matrices.
Before you apply, give your résumé a refresh: a tidy, role-focused layout using a professional cv template makes Welsh recruiters—who sift hundreds of PDFs weekly—notice you faster.
Looking ahead
With fresh capital flowing into offshore wind, rail electrification, digital finance and semiconductor fabs, Welsh labour demand should stay above the UK average through at least 2027. That means sustained openings for technicians, clinicians and coders – and higher wage offers as employers compete. For jobseekers willing to relocate (or native sons and daughters eyeing a return), there has rarely been a better moment to stake a career claim west of Offa’s Dyke.
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