Statistics from CV-Library, the independent job board, have revealed that while 2015 has seen a significant rise in social care jobs, application rates have failed to maintain the same growth, resulting in dwindling candidate choice for businesses.

Latest figures from the job site’s database have highlighted that job postings in the social care industry have increased by 54.8% in the last year. The South West saw the biggest explosion in job growth with a 68.2% increase year-on-year, while the slowest occurred in the North East (21.4%).

Despite this job growth across the nation, the number of job hunters applying for roles in the sector has failed to maintain pace, resulting in an overall deficit of 22.2% in terms of the number of applications per role.

While a social care job could expect to receive 12.5 candidates per vacancies in July 2014, comparable data for July 2015 shows that this number has reduced to 9.7, meaning businesses have less choice during the selection process.

Lee Biggins, founder and managing director of CV-Library called this a growing trend: “As jobs are on the rise, applicants can afford to be more selective in their job search. With the recent decline in applications per role, it’s clear that businesses need to become savvier at attracting new talent to their organisations.”

A recent survey by the company showed 96.5% of social care professionals rate training programmes as ‘very important’ when considering new employment. Lee explained this means “offering robust training from the outset could be a useful tool for organisations looking to attract more candidates to their vacancies.”