I speak to UK recruiters every week. The conversation has changed over the last two years.
It used to be about lifestyle. Beaches, sunshine, the flight home at Christmas. Now the first question is almost always about billings — can I actually make money there, or am I swapping one hard market for another?
Fair question. Here is what the numbers say.
The UK market has been grinding for a long time
Permanent placements in the UK have now fallen for 45 consecutive months. That is not a blip, that is nearly four years of a shrinking perm market. The most recent KPMG and REC Report on Jobs shows the rate of decline finally easing, and temp billings growing at their fastest pace in over three years, but the underlying story is the same one UK recruiters have been living: clients delaying decisions, budgets under pressure, and a flight to flexible hiring rather than headcount.
Candidate availability keeps rising, largely off the back of redundancies. That sounds like a recruiter’s dream until you remember that a market full of available candidates and no live roles is the worst possible combination for a perm desk. You end up doing more work per placement, for a smaller fee, with a longer time-to-fill.
If you want the sharpest weekly read on where all of this is heading, Hung Lee’s Recruiting Brainfood is still the best thing in our industry. I read it every week and it shapes how I think about this market.
If you have been billing well through the last few years, genuinely, take the credit. You have been recruiting on hard mode.
Australia is not booming — but it is a different shape
I want to be honest here, because there is a lot of misleading content aimed at recruiters thinking about the move.
Australia is not the 2022 market. Job ads are down on their peak, applications per ad are up, and hiring timelines have stretched. Unemployment has drifted up from the lows. Anyone telling you it is a gold rush is selling you something.
What Australia has is structural demand that the UK currently does not. Roughly 29% of assessed occupations are still in national shortage, with the pressure sitting in health, construction, education and regional trades. Infrastructure pipelines in Victoria, Queensland and WA are running for years, not quarters. Staffing Industry Analysts have the Australian market growing around 3% in 2026 and 4% in 2027 after a flat 2025 — modest, but growth rather than contraction.
That is the difference. The UK is stabilizing after a long fall. Australia is growing slowly from a reasonable base. Those two things feel completely different when you are sitting on a desk.
What that actually means for your billings
Fees here are typically 15–20% of a package including super, and clients are used to paying them. Base salaries for recruiters sit higher than the UK equivalent, and commission structures are often more generous at the top end because agencies here are competing hard for experienced billers.
I have written up the detail on this separately — what recruiters actually earn in Australia, base and commission — because it is the question I get asked most.
The bigger point is competition for talent. Every good agency in Melbourne and Sydney is looking for recruiters who can genuinely do the job — not people who ran an inbound desk during the boom. If you have billed through a difficult UK market, you have exactly the skill set agencies here are short of. You know how to develop business when clients are not calling you.
The practical bit
Most people come over on a Working Holiday Visa and move onto a 482, which is where sponsorship and a longer stay become possible. That transition costs money and takes time, so factor it in properly rather than assuming it will sort itself out.
Agencies will sponsor, but they invest in people who look like a five-year proposition, not a working holiday with a job attached. If you are serious about staying, say so early and say it clearly. It changes the conversation.
I have put together a guide covering visas, sponsorship and relocation for international recruiters moving to Australia if you want the practical detail.
My honest take
Do not move here expecting an easy market. Move here because the market is growing rather than shrinking, because the skills shortages are structural, and because agencies are actively competing for people who can bill in tough conditions.
That is a genuinely better place to build a career right now than what most of my UK contacts are describing.
If you are weighing it up, my inbox is open. I would rather give you a straight answer about whether it is right for you than place you into something that does not stick.
