2026. Just when I thought that perhaps the market would improve, we seem to have more market uncertainty than we did in 2025. In the last couple of weeks there have been several more redundancies across the region, particularly in the agency space and in talking to both clients and candidates there is some despondency.
As one might expect, redundancies do tend to affect the higher costs within a business - typically in an agency this would be Account Director and above. This is where agencies can make quite a significant saving on their balance sheet and as a result, 2025 saw many employees affected at this level by redundancy.
Additionally in 2025, together with the rise in minimum wage and to NI contributions, agencies were pushed when it came to hiring juniors. We saw at least 20% less hiring at the AE level than in the previous two years and with less senior hires, we started to see the midweight level of client servicing - Account Managers and Senior Account Managers becoming more squeezed. Taking on more administrative tasks due to lack of juniors but also stretched on delivery with no-one to escalate work to.
So the current state of play is that we have a lot of out of work Account Directors and above with very few roles to share with them. What is not clear, is how many agencies are functioning without this layer within their structure - typically where planning, strategy and client growth are key responsibilities.
Several agency owners have shared their frustration with me that they are finding junior training, development and retention difficult. My view is that there are several factors affecting this - as with most things, there is seldom just one reason! Juniors are coming into the sector demanding higher than ever before salaries and with high expectations of fast progression and working conditions (flexibility/benefits/hybrid working). As they are costing agencies more and we are seeing Account Managers and Senior Account Managers hard pushed to manage high workloads, we have a situation where agencies are not prioritising (cannot prioritise perhaps?) training so that juniors gain skills quickly to ease the pressure in a client services team. This leads to frustration from the juniors and from the agency owners who have subconsciously got higher expectations of an AE demanding a basic salary of £25k compared to £18k in the old days.
Looking at this objectively and trying to find a solution where I can help some of my out of work senior level candidates, I'm wondering whether there is a new middle ground to be found. In 2025, a few agencies did hire more senior people to do a role which they were technically overqualified to perform. Often, when I suggest this to agencies, they are not always pro as it doesn't always fit with progression in terms of their structure and culture, however, in some of the smaller independents, I am wondering if this is something that could take off.
More senior candidates who are seeing a very dismal jobs market are increasingly happy to earn less in order to stay in this industry. They do not equate earning less to working less hard or being less committed to their role. But they do equate it to taking less responsibility (say working as a SAM as opposed to an AD) and therefore having less day to day stress and potentially a greater work life balance. An agency owner can be confident that they have hired someone who requires minimal management, who can wear all the hats (and is prepared to) and who they can trust to be credible and professional at all times with their clients.
Some clients do argue that they'd be hiring this person until they found something at the right level but in my experience, once an individual has accepted a new normal and a role where they are respected without having to sell a kidney (a favourite expression of mine...), they are much happier in their employment and more loyal.
As we're all now going to be working into our seventies, it's unrealistic that we'll keep on seeking promotions all the way through our lifetime. I think some people will move into a second career or something more 'fulfilling' if they feel that they have outgrown the creative sector - often criticised for being a 'young person's game'. Or perhaps the alternative is that we have a new layer of individuals who are happy to just 'be'. Pay me a good salary and treat me nicely and I'll work hard, be professional and get stuff done with no hassle. I can see a future in this and I hope some of my independent agency owner clients can do too!
I haven't fully considered the ramifications for juniors joining the industry but increasingly I worry that the creative sector is not as attractive as it once was and with fewer roles, earning capacity and average salaries, the current market conditions and adapting to AI etc, things are certainly changing at this end of the career spectrum. Additionally we don't want to lose all the positive things that new, ideas driven, tech minded and motivated juniors do bring to the agency world. There's probably another blog there so I'll save it for the time being!.
In the meantime, if you're a client looking to hire or a candidate looking for a trustworthy and hard working recruitment partner, give me a call 07976 125963.
By Fiona. 20 March 2026.