Changelog · public
What's new on JobLabs
Every dataset, tool, guide, and feature we ship — dated. Updated as releases happen. The fastest way to see what's actually changed since you last visited.
- tool
UK Settlement Agreement Calculator shipped — 25th free tool
Free, no-email-wall, recruiter-built UK settlement calculator. Three bands (Low / Realistic / Stretch) covering statutory redundancy + PILON via PENP rules (ITEPA s.402D) + holiday buyout + ex-gratia (tenure-banded) + Vento 2025 injury-to-feelings uplift for discrimination claims. £30k tax-free split between statutory + ex-gratia made explicit; PILON / holiday separated as fully taxable. Reason-aware multipliers (redundancy 1.0, mutual 0.8, dispute 1.0, discrimination 1.6 + Vento). Fills a 6-9k/mo UK search gap currently behind solicitor email-walls. Hard amber "Not legal advice" disclaimer; solicitor sign-off remains required by UK law. Internal-link surface: ~50+ pages across canonical guides (settlement, redundancy, constructive dismissal, day-1 unfair dismissal, whistleblowing), programmatic redundancy + workplace-issue + career-FAQ pages, the made-redundant article, the redundancy hub CTA, the homepage feature list, the glossary canonical entry, and the Pair-this-with block on every related calculator. Schema: SoftwareApplication (with featureList of 8 capabilities, applicationSubCategory: LegalCalculator, browserRequirements, publisher) + FAQPage (8 detailed FAQs) + HowTo (4 steps). Build clean: 3,223 HTML pages, 0 broken internal links, 35 SoftwareApplication schemas (was 34).
- feature
Article-schema image field auto-injection (Top-Stories rich-result eligibility)
BaseLayout now auto-injects the resolved OG image URL as the `image` field on every Article-typed schema in the page schema graph. Article rich results in Google SERPs require a representative image; previously 0 of 1,409 Article schemas carried an image field — they were ineligible for the Top Stories carousel, knowledge-panel article cards, and Discover surface ranking. Single-edit fix: BaseLayout maps the merged schemas array, mutates @type=Article entries to include `image` (absolute URL), preserves existing image where set. Coverage went 0 → 1,409 (100%) in one build.
- feature
Sitewide SEO + linking + schema sprint — 1,000+ contextual changes
39 canonical statutory pages now reciprocally link into 6 hand-picked specific cluster scenarios each via the new ClusterScenariosCallout component (~234 new contextual outbound links). 13 cluster /[slug] templates now inject canonical-refs into their Related Resources sections (~285 new inbound links to statutory pages). Long-tail cluster scenarios moved from 1–3 inbound to 16–37; canonical pages from 3–13 inbound to 18–127. SpeakableSpecification schema extended from 65% → 100% Article-page coverage (+498 pages: cover-letter examples, salary, salary-by-level, interview/questions, resume/cv-examples, jobs/[city], salary/negotiate, tools/[slug]-alternatives). HowTo schema added to all 18 free-tool calculators (was 8). Title length tightened on 6 programmatic templates (~370 pages) — weak titles down 23 → 9 (remaining 9 are natural-language Q&A queries). Anchor variation: master-hub CTA distribution fixed via per-page seeding (was 3-of-5 pool variants used, now all 5 spread across 215 pages); glossary back-link 142x single anchor → 5 variants (23-33 each); calculator CTA pool diversified across 360+ programmatic pages. Freshness signal: 987 pages now carry dateModified=2026-04-30 (was 2). All 3 strict build gates green: 8,131 schema blocks · 1,558 OG-validated pages · 0 broken internal links.
- feature fix
SEO infrastructure sprint — strict build gates + full schema coverage
Three strict build gates now block regressions: (1) audit-schema.cjs --strict catches missing or malformed JSON-LD, (2) validate-og.cjs catches default OG fallbacks, (3) validate-internal-links.cjs catches broken hrefs. A typo where 35 root pages were silently dropping their JSON-LD (schema= instead of schemas= prop) is now fixed and structurally prevented. Speakable schema added on 65/65 root content pages with [data-speakable] markup pointing at the canonical answer block. Person.hasCredential added (6 entries) and Organization.sameAs anchored to GitHub. Result: 0 schema issues, 0 OG fallbacks, 0 broken links across 1,533 pages with 8,114 schema blocks.
- feature
Linkable-asset infrastructure — Cite-this-guide, Sources, Related sections
Added a Cite-this-guide block (plain prose / APA / BibTeX with copy-to-clipboard) on 10 highest-citation-potential pages: Marriage Allowance, IR35, Skilled Worker Visa, Settlement Agreement, Mileage Allowance, Take-Home Pay by Salary, Statutory Rates, 60% Tax Trap, Personal Allowance, National Insurance. Curated authoritative Sources blocks on 19 legal-heavy pages (~80 citations to legislation.gov.uk, gov.uk, ACAS, EHRC, HMRC, HSE). Related-section codemod brought orphan-page count from 17 → 0 — every page now has ≥3 inbound links and is within 3 clicks of /.
- feature
Homepage UK 2026 reference section + llms.txt expansion
Homepage now surfaces 30+ statutory linkable-asset pages organised into 4 themed sub-grids (Tax + Take-home, Pension + Savings, Employment Law + Rights, Visa + Contract). Concentrates PageRank flow on the highest-citation-potential pages. llms.txt expanded from 50 → 93 entries; ChatGPT, Perplexity and other AI crawlers now have direct pointers to all 43 statutory references on top of the master 2026 guides.
- data feature
Open data hub completes the trilogy + developers documentation
UK Tax Codes 2026/27 dataset published as the third entry in the open data hub. Developer documentation page added at /developers/ with code samples in curl, Python and TypeScript. All three datasets now cross-reference each other via schema.org/Dataset.mentions, and the hub is typed as a DataCatalog for Google Dataset Search eligibility.
- feature
Author entity verification — enriched Person + Organization schema
Alex now exposes a Person entity with 39 knowsAbout topics, hasOccupation referencing UK location, nationality/homeLocation/workLocation as Country entities, and bidirectional links to the JobLabs Organization. Strengthens E-E-A-T signal across all 1,363 articles via @id reference.
- feature
llms.txt + llms-full.txt — AI crawler citation files
Implemented the llmstxt.org spec so ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini can discover the site's high-citation reference content efficiently. llms.txt is a curated index; llms-full.txt is a dynamically generated full-content extract that pulls live from the salary and statutory rates data files.
- data
UK Statutory Rates 2026/27 — second open dataset
73 UK statutory rates across 19 categories — income tax, NI (employee/employer/self-employed), NLW/NMW by age, SSP/SMP/SPP/SAP, redundancy, pension auto-enrolment, state pension, student loan plans, ISA allowances, Marriage Allowance. JSON + CSV. CC BY 4.0.
- data
UK Salaries 2026 — first open dataset launched
30 UK roles × 8 cities × 4 seniority levels published under CC BY 4.0. Built from Reed.co.uk, Indeed UK, LinkedIn Talent Insights, the 2025 Robert Walters Salary Survey, Hays UK Salary Guide and ONS earnings data, cross-referenced against placements.
- feature
Auto-emit BreadcrumbList JSON-LD on every page
BaseLayout now derives BreadcrumbList JSON-LD from the URL path so every non-home page gets one without each template hard-coding its own schema. Closed an 80% schema-coverage gap (was 292/1481 pages, now 1480/1481).
- fix feature
Per-page SEO quality pass — 0 duplicates, 96% fewer weak titles
Built scripts/audit-page-seo.cjs which surfaces duplicate titles/descriptions, weak meta, bad H1 structure, missing alt text, thin content. Then drove the metrics to: 0 duplicate titles, 0 duplicate descriptions, 0 bad H1 pages, 0 missing alt, 0 thin content. Title template optimised so descriptive content fits Google's SERP cap.
- fix feature
Internal-link equity overhaul — 0 orphans, 0 unreachable, 0 click-depth violations
Built scripts/analyze-internal-links.cjs and scripts/validate-internal-links.cjs (now wired into npm run build). Drove orphan pages from 548 → 0, unreachable pages from 314 → 0, click-depth violations from 314 → 0. Added BrowseAllSiblings component to 26 cluster templates so every page is reachable in ≤3 clicks from /.
- guide fix
Two missing pillar guides built — UK Employment Law + UK Salary Guide 2026
Browser walkthrough caught /uk-employment-law-guide-2026/ returning 404 with 37 internal references pointing to it. Same for /uk-salary-guide-2026/. Both built as proper pillar guides with topic-area sections linking down to programmatic clusters.
- guide
14 programmatic surfaces · ~210 UK guides shipped
Programmatic content clusters: UK employer rules, UK workplace issues, UK family rights, UK disability rights, UK mental health at work, UK pension at work, UK tax reliefs, UK tax codes, UK contract types, UK visa guides, UK job offer playbooks, UK job search situations, UK career FAQ, UK HMRC forms.
- guide data
UK Hiring Report 2026 — citation-bait research piece
Original UK 2026 hiring market analysis with trend charts, designed as a linkable asset for journalists covering the new tax year.
- tool
Free interactive tools shipped
UK Take-Home Pay Calculator, UK Redundancy Pay Calculator, UK Notice Period Calculator, UK Bonus Tax Calculator, UK Pay Rise Calculator, Offer Comparison Tool, Cover Letter Generator, CV Keyword Match Score, Career Change Difficulty Score, Job Description Analyzer.