The job market is the worst it's been in my memory?

Yep - a really bad market for office workers. Redundancies left right and centre. Anyone changing job right now is looking at a demotion + pay cut well below what the demoted level used to pay.

I agree about the moon on the stick attitudes. I am looking to move job. Apparently it is really hard to recruit people to do my job. And some of the asks are absolutely insane.

I think there is a real mismatch with what employers are offering and employees' expectations right now.

Employers:

• high expectations of candidates (degree, previous experience, complete flexibility) that does not match the salaries they are offering
• A bizarre reluctance to accept that being stuck in an open plan office all day, all week, 9 to 5, is not the one and only way to work and often not the best
• often have impossible to achieve job descriptions (basically expect one individual to do the work of several employees...)
• inability to consider transferrable skills and unwilling to offer any training, so only willing to employ someone who has done an almost identical job with a similar organisation
• prejudices against older and disabled workers and those with caring responsibilities
• convoluted application forms and selection processes.

Employees:

• value and want flexible work options
• want a decent salary so they can have a decent standard of living.

In my area (IT) there is a long-running joke about organisations posting job ads demanding 10 years experience using software that was only released 5 years ago.
There is definitely a moon on a stick attitude. I have been contacted by loads of recruiters over the last 5 months about a job that I could easy do. For some reason though, it has remained unfilled for 5 months.
I suspect it's because they think they can find the next Richard Branson or Anita Roddick for £45k

Fellow 2009 graduate here! I hear you 👋

Yup. These don't seem to be outliers, either; I saw numerous examples all over when I was job-hunting. Entry-level wages, entry-level roles, but the employers wanted prior experience in a similar role or a relevant degree – if not both!

Exactly this - I had a quick look at an accounts assistant role at a client as I knew they were a couple of people down in their finance department and I was looking for something part time to dovetail round my current job.

Entry level role and was full time so not good for me. But essential requirements included: educated to degree level in a numerate subject, and with strong A-levels in mathematical/ scientific based subjects. Really?

This is a very odd choice of hill you're dying on.

It wasn't rare. You don't get your own definitions of words, and nor have you provided any stats. Millions of employees were doing it or had done it in 2019, and this does not constitute rare. None of this is a matter of opinion. You're just wrong.

The rest is you moving the goalposts, and some of it doesn't even make sense. 'Average employee' doesn't tell us much here, because remote work is impossible in some roles. Not rare, but non-existent. Then, as now, remote work was concentrated in occupations where people work from a computer and/or a phone. So a waitress and an accountant would've had very different odds of finding wfh roles in their sectors.

Not saying it was but many people are taking the piss looking after kids, housework etc. Which is why so many companies are now going back to work in office.
It's also not that great physically or mentally for many.

Indeed. Last week, I came across a local job of "finance assistant", wage listed as £11.44 per hour, the legal minimum for an employee aged over 21. So, entry-level role, yes?

Job requirements: Bachelor's degree in Accounting, Finance, or a related field.
Prior experience in a finance or accounting role preferred.

It’s interesting that posters have mentioned a change in the last year. I have been freelancing for some time and thinking to go for a regular job again.

I’m also under the impression that there has been a drastic change recently and I presume it is to do with technology and AI replacing roles.

I was just “keeping an eye” in the last year because there was a lot going on in my life.

Now that I am ready to look for salaried positions (by which I mean I have freelance projects to complete, so I wouldn’t be able to do an immediate start on anything) I’m seeing a lot less now than I did last year.

From about January to April 2023, my sister said that she’d more headhunting calls than she’d ever had in her life.

I don’t know what happened, but it’s like there was a surge of activity, and now it’s stopped.

Yeah but Covid DID happen. And society moves forward.

Why do we have to stay with the old structure? Why was that better?

The fact is most people before COVID didn't get the option then they were dumped in it and don't want to come out. Most normal office jobs were not remote. If the average employee decided to be remote it was rare that they could find something, argue as much as you like but most people are not in managerial, speciality jobs and for them it was a rare chance.

I don't dislike my job, but I don't like my manager. Unfortunately I'm stuck with them until either they get fed up and leave or I go on maternity leave. The latter not likely given my infertility issues. We're in a hiring freeze at the moment and the company had a major restructure in January last year due to, well, nobody keeping an eye on the finances. Imo it doesn't help that you have to have a degree now. I'm lucky in that I accrued years of experience and cross-departmental training in the earlier years at my job. I don't have a degree, although my role requires one, but oodles of experience suffices as well.

I've had the same thought! We don't seem to hear from a lot of employers who are desperate to be able to recruit people who've historically not been able to hold down a job. It's just an assumption that a warm body in a job will be sufficient.

What's wrong with all the applicants? Too old? Too expensive?

I know it's anecdotal, but I have been pretty much 100% remote working since 2013.

There's also going to be a HUGE new life sciences hub in Whitechapel around the Royal London:

This is 100% true - the reality of the "skills shortage" is "we can't get brilliantly skilled and trained staff at the fucking awful salaries we need to pay to make sure top execs keep getting double digit rises every fucking year"

a friend has spent the week interviewing for entry level banking jobs and has candidates, but no one he wants to appoint. The government wants to dump a whole lot of people with depression on the job market. I wonder who will want to employ them?

I think that's true of a lot of roles. Not in every sector, and evidently not in OPs. But some sectors are just fishing in a pretty shallow pond, without enough bait.

There are SO many jobs out there, I don't think I would struggle to find another if I needed to. Part of the problem is people's expectations have changed.

But I think if you're struggling to recruit then you're probably not paying enough, or people think they can get a better deal elsewhere (e.g. less stress, more interesting work).

For example, you site the £120,000 role, but maybe the calibre of staff you're looking for are being paid £150,000 elsewhere.

I regularly see jobs advertised in my sector for my role wanting 3 days a week in office, for two-thirds of what I'm getting paid. I don't see jobs advertising for more than I'm being paid.

Feel the same as you OP. it's depressing.

I'm also told I "should be grateful"

Luckily, the Oxford English Dictionary have got there for me.

https://www.oed.com/search/dictionary/?scope=Entries&q=rare

And it's not pedantic to point out that what you said was wrong. The fact is that there was already a trend in the 2010s towards more remote working. Covid massively accelerated something that was already very much in existence. This actually is pretty important when we're talking about the changes in the job market over the past few years.