UK Update5 October 2026
People find the register of licensed sponsors, see how long it is, and feel relieved. 127,334 companies, and every one of them is allowed to sponsor a worker. It reads like a list of 127,334 chances.
We counted the other side of it tonight, Monday 5 October 2026. Our list holds 612 live adverts. Behind those 612 adverts there are 178 different employers. One hundred and seventy eight, out of 127,334.
That is not a scandal and nobody is hiding anything. It is just the thing nobody tells you, and it changes what you should do with your evenings.
A sponsor licence is a permission a company holds. It is not a vacancy and it does not expire when the company stops hiring. A firm can hold a licence for years, sponsor two people in all that time, and sit on the register the whole while.
Of the 127,334 active sponsors we hold tonight, 121,982 carry a Skilled Worker licence. Most of those companies are not hiring this week, and when they are hiring, most of the posts go to people who already have the right to work here. That is normal and it is legal.
There is a second reason the gap looks so wide, and it is about us rather than about them. 178 is the number of employers whose adverts reached us, from the job sources we read, and passed our check. A company that only posts on its own careers page, or hires through word of mouth, is invisible to us. So read 178 as the size of the advertised pool we can see, not as the number of sponsors hiring in Britain tonight.
Counted on our own database tonight, here is the shape of the list.
The usual plan is to treat the register as a job board. Open it, pick companies, send a CV to each one. People do this for weeks and hear nothing, and decide the whole route is closed.
It was never a job board. It is a list of companies allowed to sponsor, published so you can check one. Used that way it is the best free tool in this whole business. Used as a hiring list it is 127,334 cold emails and a flat month.
Our 612 is small, and small is easier to read than large. 612 adverts you can get through. 229 of them appeared this week, and that is one evening of work, not one month.
Use the advertised list for applying. Read the newest first, because an advert that appeared this week is one somebody is still reading. Our jobs page has a Today button and a This week button for exactly that.
Use the register for checking. When you find a job anywhere, on any board, take the employer name and check it against the register before you spend an hour on the application. Our check is free, with no account and no sign in.
And use the register for one more thing, carefully. 6,340 different towns hold at least one licensed sponsor, so there are almost certainly some in yours. Looking at their own careers pages is slow work, but it reaches the part of the market no board ever shows. Keep it as the second half of your evening, not the first.
A licence is permission to sponsor somebody. It is never a promise to sponsor you, for this job, this year. That holds for all 127,334 of them.
These counts are ours. 612, 178 and 395 are measured on our own database tonight, from the sources we read, and the register figures come from the edition the Home Office published on 2 October 2026. Another service reading other sources would count something different, and neither count is the whole market.
Pay is the number the visa turns on, and 425 of tonight's adverts are silent about it. So ask in your first message. What is the annual salary for this role, and does the company sponsor a Skilled Worker visa for it. A serious employer answers both halves.
Looking is free here. No account, no password, nothing to cancel. Searching, the town counts and the licence check all cost nothing.
The employer name and the apply link on a checked advert cost £20, once, forever. You apply direct to the employer on their own website, and we never touch your application.
Nobody may charge you for a certificate of sponsorship. Selling one is a criminal offence in the UK, and anybody offering you a job for a fee is not offering you a job.
We are a job alert service, not immigration advisers, and this is not legal advice. For your own case speak to a regulated adviser or a support organisation.
Where this comes from: GOV.UK: register of licensed sponsors, workersGOV.UK: Skilled Worker visa
5 October 2026 