Sharp growth in ‘metaverse’ jobs over the last three months
The number of companies seeking metaverse experts is soaring, with hundreds of openings on offer across the UK and the number steeply climbing, according to new research from smarter job search engine Adzuna.
The research analysed the tens of millions of jobs available on Adzuna over the last five years, revealing trends in the monthly number of UK job postings featuring the keywords ‘metaverse’, ‘crypto’, and ‘cybersecurity’.
January 2022 saw 250 advertised vacancies for metaverse positions, up from 116 in December, and 102 in November. The number of metaverse vacancies has grown fivefold in three months from just 47 jobs in October, the month in which Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg rebranded his company to ‘Meta’ and announced a $10bn project to build a parallel ‘metaverse’ universe.
Metaverse opportunities range from openings for UI and animation designers, to developers, UX designers, writers, and data scientists.
Although the re-branding of Facebook to Meta has catalysed a rise in openings, the first metaverse posting was in June 2016, showing the concept has existed for several years albeit as a niche rather than mainstream term.
The trend is also evident in the US, which saw 1,892 metaverse jobs on offer in January 2022, up from 697 three months prior in October.
Crypto and cybersecurity postings also growing
Two further areas have also seen rapid growth in job postings. The number of job vacancies mentioning the keyword ‘crypto’ has risen sharply, accounting for 1,520 advertised vacancies in January 2022, up from 1,175 in October and +465% higher compared to 269 a year ago. Similarly, there were 3,298 ‘cybersecurity’ vacancies in January 2022, up from 2,712 in October and +139% from 1,382 a year ago.
James Neave, Head of Data Science at Adzuna, commented: “Hiring metaverse experts is the latest recruitment trend to show exponential growth. The last three months have seen a surge in job openings related to the metaverse both here in the UK and over in the US, with demand catalysed by Zuckerberg’s Facebook rebranding and refocusing exercise.
"Metaverse experts are the new hot ticket with related roles ranging from developers, to data scientists, writers, and creatives. It follows booming interest in crypto roles throughout 2021 and a tech sector that continues to go from strength to strength.”
