Insights
Where are the sponsored jobs? UK regions compared
London holds a third of the sponsor register. It does not follow that a sponsored vacancy is proportionally easier to find there, so this counts both.
Last updated 11 Sept 2026. First published 11 Sept 2026. Every figure on this page is computed from the Applyfit database and recomputed daily.
In short
London holds the most open vacancies at licensed sponsors, 1,878 of 8,351. It also holds 39.5% of the licensed sponsors whose registered address resolves to a region, so the raw count says less than it appears to.
Measured per 100 licensed sponsors, South West is ahead at 13.4 open vacancies per 100.
Open vacancies at licensed sponsors
The count, by region. This is where the advertised work is, and it follows the population and the register.
Open vacancies at licensed Skilled Worker sponsors, by region
View these figures as a table
| Name | Open vacancies |
|---|---|
| London | 1,878 |
| South East | 841 |
| North West | 800 |
| South West | 679 |
| West Midlands | 621 |
| Yorkshire and The Humber | 605 |
| East | 533 |
| East Midlands | 384 |
| Scotland | 248 |
| North East | 146 |
| Wales | 104 |
Vacancies per 100 licensed sponsors
The same vacancies divided by the number of licensed sponsors registered in each region. This measures how busy the licensed employers in a region are, not how many there are, and it reorders the list.
Open vacancies per 100 licensed sponsors, by region
View these figures as a table
| Name | Per 100 sponsors |
|---|---|
| South West | 13.4 |
| Yorkshire and The Humber | 11.7 |
| North West | 8.9 |
| North East | 8.0 |
| West Midlands | 7.7 |
| East Midlands | 7.1 |
| South East | 6.4 |
| East | 5.9 |
| Scotland | 5.5 |
| Wales | 5.1 |
| London | 4.5 |
What each region is hiring for
The three occupations with the most open vacancies at licensed sponsors in each region, among the adverts carrying an occupation code.
What the rate does not say
A high rate means the licensed employers registered in that region are advertising. It does not mean they are advertising in that region: large employers register one address and hire across the country, and the vacancy count is placed by the advert while the sponsor count is placed by the register entry. The two are measured from different documents and the rate carries that seam.
Neither column is a measure of how likely sponsorship is. Holding a licence is a permission to sponsor, not a commitment to.
How these figures were produced
A vacancy counts when it is open, is not a duplicate, and its employer matches an organisation on the Home Office register holding a live Skilled Worker licence. Its region is the ONS region named or implied by the advert’s own location text.
A sponsor is placed in a region by the town and county on its register entry, resolved through the same place table the rest of the site uses. 17,323 licensed sponsors do not resolve to a region — the register entry gives a place the table does not hold, or gives none — and they are excluded from both columns rather than assigned to a neighbour.
1,512 open vacancies are excluded from the rate for the same reason: their advert states no place, or states only “UK”, and there is no region to divide by. They are counted in the site total and nowhere else here.
Northern Ireland is absent. The ONS earnings table this site works from has no Northern Ireland row, so a Belfast advert resolves to the national figure, and inventing a region for it would be worse than leaving it out.
The full list of sources, the refresh cadence and what “estimated” means are on the methodology page.
Cite this
Applyfit, “Where are the sponsored jobs? UK regions compared”, updated 11 Sept 2026. https://applyfit.co.uk/insights/sponsored-jobs-by-region
Information from public records, not immigration advice.