Labour have ruined the job market

Yes, this straw man that those who are criticising Labour are just looking to make Labour the scapegoat for everything that’s a bit shit is just plain stupid…

I voted Labour. I really wanted them to succeed and take this country forwards… I really want a reason to be happy with them, but their policies are taking us in the opposite direction.

There will always be lots of business both small and large who will take the opportunity of something like NI / NMW / employment costs to cut staff or to freeze pay rises etc.

Just like when we see things like Brexit / Ukraine, so many companies increasing prices way above the impact of the former as an excuse. See food inflation in supermarkets for an example of this.

It's a good way of deflecting profit before people ethos and to try and scare existing staff into accepting crap pay and conditions or customer/clients expectations.

An example of this is the horror show of trying to get customer service from household names like John Lewis / HSBC.
Chat bots or hours on the phone trying to get through to someone reading a script or with absolutely no pleasantries or people skills let alone customer care. I'm sure those companies will be blaming someone else for this level of service.

Yes, businesses do need to be encouraged to invest and become more productive… But whacking them with up to 10% extra costs from NIC and national living wage in one year isn’t the way to do it!

They've fucked up the weather, too, it's been cold and damp for weeks here.

@LakieLady do you think their policies have no effect?

But Labour policies have made things WORSE! Repeating ad nauseam that the Tories were crap just doesn’t cut it.

They've fucked up the weather, too, it's been cold and damp for weeks here.

Although after her new expenses situation the new name doing the rounds is Chancer of the exchequer 🤣

I live nowhere near the UK and I've heard her referred to as Rachel from accounts many, many, times on MN. Maybe you would be better concentrating on the real issues rather than something so petty.

As a pp stated politicians are prone to being given such names by the general public, it shows what people think of them. Good politicians don't have quite the same issues.

Quite. I run a business with my DH and we're not afraid of hardwork, we've had no holidays for the past 14 years (working 51 weeks out of the year). The increase in business rates for a just out of the city centre unit plus NI increase, plus utiliities increase means it's just not worth our while to keep going much longer. If you take on all the stresses that go along with running a business, naturally you expect there to be decent financial benefit otherwise why would anyone bother?

I neither voted Lab, Con or Ref and I completely agree with you. The combined brainpower of the incumbent Labour party know slightly less than bugger all about economics.

Whilst you are in a terrible position, I know many people that have been made redundant and also had struggles finding the 'right' job (and by right I mean with the exact salary and title expectations as they wanted) and this was within the year before Labour got in to power.

The redundancies I know of were made in sectors that have been reshaped by the way COVID impacted these sectors and a lot of money was pumped in to departments that were no longer sustainable after the world moved back in to the new normal.

I'm not meaning to be arsey it's just the story being told here isn't reflected in the data.

A hiring freeze isn't the same as redundancies and if you're going to struggle in 2025 on existing headcount surely that means growth is good?

It was from a site call. Alwaysfinance. No idea if that's a decent source. Michael page said the outlook was mixed.

I couldn't find any doom and gloom apart from an article from last January.

The ONS recorded financial services job vacancy growth of 4% in the last quarter of 2024 vs the year before....

Well that’s not translating to the coalface @OneLemonDog. I‘m in a FTSE 100 FS company and we’ve had our 2025 headcount’s cancelled as have our peers. Not sure how we can cope with current headcount but we have no choice.

It'll be the most recent hiring intention surveys. I haven't delved into them but did see it reported that the FS sector is increasingly optimistic

www.staffingindustry.com/news/global-daily-news/uk-financial-services-firms-boost-permanent-and-project-based-hiring#:~:text=Hiring%20intentions%20in%20the%20UK's,shortages%20continues%20to%20be%20felt.%E2%80%9D

Where on earth do you get your data that “financial services is cautiously optimistic” @ThinkAboutItTomorrow. We really aren’t. Ref CBI, ABI

Financial Services is my sector @ThinkAboutItTomorrow. We are all on recruitment freezes following the budget. These are jobs with prospects
ad training that have now been pissed down the drain. HGV driver jobs do not compare.

Is this shown by data? @Babadookinthewardrobe?

Financial services job outlook for 2025 is 'cautiously optimistic for growth' as of 5th Feb

Tech and IT job market is forecast to be 'solid but unspectacular'

What areas are being badly hit?

The majority of those jobs will require top ups via working tax credits @ThinkAboutItTomorrow. From taxpayers because labour has fucked the jobs market.

Miminum wage jobs @ThinkAboutItTomorrow. All the decent jobs are on freeze.

There are 816000 jobs. Slightly above 2019 and miles above the early 2010's.

Our unemployment rate is the average of g7 countries.

The forecast for 2025 is a slight uptick in unemployment from 4.4% to 4.7%.

Compared to 8% in 2011 I don't see the panic?

The market is beyond terrible @ThinkAboutItTomorrow. All the jobs are being withdrawn because the employers can’t afford it. There are no jobs.

But it's contracting from a historic high. Unemployment is pretty low and vacancies are in line with pre-pandemic and 40% higher than 10 years ago.

We're coming out of a massive labour shortage but that's not the same as the market being bad.

It's taxing employment not profit. It's all terrible.

thats the other issue, govt want as many in work yet businesses cannot make profits so whats left to do with all the people etc