The numbers in this piece come from the Companies House register and the Adzuna job search API, measured 13 July 2026. Method at the bottom. This is the first edition of an index we will re-measure every quarter, the same way each time.
One number per trade: how badly the industry needs people
Take every registered company in a trade. Count every live job advert for that trade. Divide. You get a single, comparable number: vacancies per 100 registered firms, which we are calling the Trade Pressure Index. It tells you how hard a trade is straining to find people, and, as it turns out, quite a lot about who survives.
The index · July 2026
Electricians: 79.1 (47,916 live vacancies against 60,574 registered firms)
Plumbing and heating: 15.2 (8,139 against 53,505)
Joinery: 14.5 (3,532 against 24,288)
Vehicle care: 9.8 (6,139 against 62,524)
Cafes: 5.4 (2,677 against 49,931)
Hairdressing and beauty: 0.9 (665 against 77,940)
That is an 88-fold spread between the top and bottom of the table. These are different economies wearing the same word, trade.
Pressure explains survival
Earlier this month we published 18-month survival figures for new companies in these trades, pulled from the same register. Put the two side by side and a pattern appears. Electrical firms had the best survival we measured (17% of the January 2025 cohort dissolved) and they sit at the top of the pressure table. Hairdressing had the worst survival (24% dissolved) and sits at the very bottom. Demand, it seems, is the cushion: when a trade is straining this hard for capacity, a young firm gets more chances to survive its early mistakes, because the work keeps coming.
What to do with your trade’s number
High pressure (electricians, plumbers): your competitors are busy, booked out and slow to answer the phone. The job goes to whoever responds first and can be found at 9pm. High pressure rewards being findable and quick far more than being cheap.
Middle of the table (joinery, vehicle care, cafes): demand exists but does not carry you. Reputation and visibility do the carrying, which is why the register shows survivors in these trades investing in exactly that.
Low pressure (hair and beauty): 665 employed vacancies against nearly 78,000 registered companies is the chair-rental economy in a single ratio. Almost nobody is hiring because almost everyone is self-employed. Your name, your reviews and your booking link are the whole business, which is why an Instagram-only presence is a bigger risk here than anywhere else.
Method, so you can check it
Registered company counts: Companies House advanced search, active companies per trade SIC code (43210 electrical installation, 43220 plumbing and heating, 43320 joinery installation, 45200 vehicle maintenance including detailing and valeting, 56102 cafes, 96020 hairdressing and beauty), 13 July 2026. Vacancy counts: Adzuna job search API, UK-wide keyword counts the same day (electrician, plumber, joiner, vehicle technician, barista, hairdresser). Honest limits: the register counts companies, not sole traders, so read the index as vacancies per registered company rather than per business; vacancy counts are a platform sample, not a census; and a keyword is an approximation of a trade. The index re-runs quarterly with the identical method, so the trend line will be honest. Corrections welcome at hello@modemarketing.co.uk.
Where Mode fits
Mode builds the findability side of this: fixed-price websites and AI visibility work, with every price published. If your trade sits anywhere on this table, the same lesson applies, the work goes to the firm that can be found.
