More than one in six jobs being advertised in the UK requires applicants to be able to drive, research suggests.

17.4% of the ads analysed required those applying to have at least a standard driving licence

The RAC Foundation analysed recruitment ads posted on the Adzuna site for the first week of October 2023. Of the total 1,092,172 advertisements, 189,608 (17.4%) explicitly or implicitly required those applying to have at least a standard driving licence.

This was either due to the role being specifically for a driver, requiring driving during the course of work, or where a car was needed to reach work, due to a lack of alternatives.

Further analysis by the RAC Foundation has revealed that while the proportion of roles requiring driving as an employment qualification is down slightly compared to during the pandemic, it’s higher than pre-Covid.

The analysis looked at data for the same week in October in the eight years from 2016 to 2023, inclusive.

The highest proportion of jobs requiring the ability to drive was seen in 2020 at the height of the pandemic (120,190 out of 611,702, or 19.6%), followed by 2021 (241,356 out of 1,296,599, or 18.6%) – when the nation was reliant on truckers and delivery drivers. But the 17.4% proportion for 2023 was still higher than in any of the four years pre-Covid.

Table 1. Job adverts and driving requirements, 2016-2023 (first week of October in each year):

Steve Gooding, director of the RAC Foundation, said: “Our research shows that when it comes to getting work, a driving licence can be a crucial qualification. Little wonder official figures show that about 45% of all driving tests conducted during 2022/23 involved candidates aged 20 or younger.

“Despite the predictions of a post-pandemic work-from-home legacy, the data suggests that when it comes to driving as an employment qualification, things today look very similar to what they did before Covid struck.

“If anything, the one in six headline figure underestimates the importance of being able to drive for roles in locations, or with shift patterns, that make them inaccessible by public transport.”

Ability to drive critical to many roles

The RAC Foundation also researched which roles were most likely to require driving for applicants.

Using specific occupation categories as defined by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the data revealed that the need to drive was, to a greater or lesser degree, a requirement in a wide variety of roles, for example:

• 100% of driving instructors
• 67% of plumbers
• 59% of estate agents and auctioneers
• 34% of care workers and home carers

The data contained adverts for 97% (398) of all occupations registered by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in the UK labour market.

Table 2: Top occupations with driving as an explicit or implicit requirement in job ads (2023)*

The sectors least likely to require job applicants to have the ability to drive were: teaching and education; culture, media and sport; and secretarial and administrative.

The RAC Foundation’s Steve Gooding added: “Many of those job ads which list a driving requirement are in relatively poorly paid sectors, such as the caring profession – something the Chancellor should have in mind when making decisions that influence the cost of motoring and which impact on those who are already struggling to pay for the transport they can’t do without.”

* When the driving requirement is expected to be at 100%, but shows lower values (e.g. 99.3% of “Large goods and vehicle drivers”), the discrepancy may be because: 1) the text search was not fully able to capture the driving requirements in the job adverts; 2) some driver or courier jobs may not require holding a driving licence, or no driving requirement is explicitly or implicitly stated; 3) the ONS Standard Occupational Classification is incorrectly attributed. Source: Adzuna.