Leah Clifford, consultant at commercial recruiter Top Type Personnel, told Recruiter the company has an abundance of candidates on itsbooks. “We have overqualified people going for lower-salary roles. We have had people coming in here who were earning £30k plus who are comfortable walking into a £15k-a-year job.”

British nationals are also targeting manual labour jobs, according to recruiters. Bernard Gaughan, general manager of multi-sector recruiter Total Labour Solutions, told Recruiter he had received three times as many applications from them, compared to the previous year. “In the main they are people who aspire to other jobs like construction. The very fact that they are willing to work in agriculture and the food sector is very commendable.”

However, Tony Watson, business development manager at multi-sector recruiter Labour-Tech, said clients were hesitant to take on these personnel: “Clients have refused point blank to take on English staff because in the past they have been lazy compared to the Eastern Europeans.”

Clifford estimates 60% of applicants the agency is currently dealing with are applying for lower-skilled jobs than they have had previously.

Research by recruitment website CV-Library.co.uk found more than a third (36%) of jobseekers will take whatever job they can get. Further to that, 58% of candidates who had made more than 10 applications had not yet had an interview, increasing to 67% for unskilled trade applications.

However, Clifford points out that while employers have the opportunity to take on over-skilled staff at a lower rate, long-term retention may be difficult as staff will move to better positions when they become available. “When the marketplace recovers, there’s going to be a huge amount of movement,” she explained