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Original poster

Labour have ruined the job market

293 replies

Needajobforspouse · 14/02/2025 20:55

My spouse was made redundant in November, has done some bid work since then (e.g zero contract parcel delivery) but not enough to make up his old salary. He has job alerts and this week there was ZERO jobs advertised that meet his qualifications.

Nobody is hiring.

I work for an SME, and I am also at risk and in bad health. Not enough for PIP etc but enough to make me unreliable (recently diagnosed as immunocompromised).

Not even the local supermarket is hiring, and they won’t touch my DH anyway as he is massively over qualified (I know a supermarket manager and they don’t take on over qualified people as they are “hard to manage” and don’t stay long term.).

yesterday our car broke and we used the last of our savings for a new one, my roof is leaking. My bay window is leaking and I just feel like giving up.

just dreading this year of shitty government policies that pick on the middle income earners and penalise us, is this life? Because if so I hate it.

also where are all the jobs?! Literally zero here in northern England.

OP posts:
Babadookinthewardrobe · 15/02/2025 19:30

JHound · 15/02/2025 17:24

Yes. In just 7 months they have apparently ruined the job market…

Show quote history

They certainly have. All of our approved headcount has been frozen following the employers NI increase. Rinse and repeat by the thousand across the country.

This ain’t Brexit folks, that happened a couple of years ago and Labour cannot pin it on that. This is Rachel Reeves budget. It is that alone, particularly the employer NI contributions that the jobs market just cannot cope with. Stop trying to spread the blame elsewhere. Rachel Reeves has destroyed the UK jobs market and we all know it.

Notmycircusnotmyotter · 15/02/2025 18:10

It's employer NICs to blame.

Labour are emotionally illiterate.

Notmycircusnotmyotter · 15/02/2025 18:08

They have. I work for a huge company that is now cutting jobs and had imposed a hiring ban.

JHound · 15/02/2025 17:24

Needajobforspouse · 14/02/2025 20:55

My spouse was made redundant in November, has done some bid work since then (e.g zero contract parcel delivery) but not enough to make up his old salary. He has job alerts and this week there was ZERO jobs advertised that meet his qualifications.

Nobody is hiring.

I work for an SME, and I am also at risk and in bad health. Not enough for PIP etc but enough to make me unreliable (recently diagnosed as immunocompromised).

Not even the local supermarket is hiring, and they won’t touch my DH anyway as he is massively over qualified (I know a supermarket manager and they don’t take on over qualified people as they are “hard to manage” and don’t stay long term.).

yesterday our car broke and we used the last of our savings for a new one, my roof is leaking. My bay window is leaking and I just feel like giving up.

just dreading this year of shitty government policies that pick on the middle income earners and penalise us, is this life? Because if so I hate it.

also where are all the jobs?! Literally zero here in northern England.

Yes. In just 7 months they have apparently ruined the job market…

tallcurvey · 15/02/2025 17:18

@Needajobforspouse

Bollocks

Brexit did and this is the continuation of the consequences

BLUEcups · 15/02/2025 16:58

That’s not the worst of it, they’re on track to ruin the fucking country!

Bigcat25 · 15/02/2025 16:51

This started way before labour came into power. And a lot of the effects are global.

Parsley1234 · 15/02/2025 16:51

@Locutus2000 on every thread regarding Rachel from accounts it’s Rachel from accounts it’s stuck 🤣

lovelydayss · 15/02/2025 15:44

ThatsNotMyTeen · 14/02/2025 21:05

Sorry you’re having such a shit time though. But if businesses can’t shoulder a relatively modest NI increase, they probably weren’t that viable anyway

That's not true.
I co-own a profitable business with 5 others, the NI raise will cost us a 6 figure sum.
Yes we can afford it but not without taking a reduction in our own profits.
We aren't making redundancies but will wait for people to leave and not replace

JLou08 · 15/02/2025 15:16

So your DPs income has been reduced for a couple of months and Labour have been in for 8 months. If everything was so great under the tories how have you got in a position where your roof and window are leaking and you have damp. Surely you would have been keeping up maintaining the home and saving if things were so great before.

isitelsa · 15/02/2025 15:16

RoastDinnerSmellsNice · 14/02/2025 21:01

Sorry OP, but I've literally just Googled jobs in the North of England and 3,656 jobs came up in the North East alone, and that was just on one site. Could he do a driving job as there are still lots of vacancies for truck drivers, etc.

That is a very ignorant (maybe naive is a better word) way to determine availability of jobs.

Many jobs on job boards aren't "real" jobs. Many are expired or no longer taking applications, others are from agencies who put up fake jobs for the sake of mining people's information and find new companies to recruit for, and then you have the rest.

Of which, it's then a lottery getting an interview and a job offer.

Locutus2000 · 15/02/2025 15:07

Parsley1234 · 15/02/2025 10:37

Rachel from accounts has stuck because she’s completely and utterly incompetent and she is a massive liar. Her Cv is a joke not one shred of truth in it it’s stuck because she’s completely incompetent it’s not misogynistic all politicians have names mostly deserving

It hasn't stuck at all, however much you try and wind people up with it. That is why you are getting called out on it.

Orangelight23 · 15/02/2025 14:27

Absolute bullshit.

TheNuthatch · 15/02/2025 14:26

So Labour introduce a jobs tax, businesses respond by cutting jobs, and we're all supposed to blame the Tories/Brexit/Trump/Musk. Basically we're supposed to blame anyone but Labour. Only on MN.

Digdongdoo · 15/02/2025 14:01

Babadookinthewardrobe · 15/02/2025 11:35

Such denial @Digdongdoo. This has been caused by the policies announced in Rachel Reeves’ budget. All the employers who are laying people off and reducing headcount all said it would happen and now it is happening.

The OP is spot on. Labour have absolutely ruined the jobs market.

Yeah you're right. Far better we carried on getting into debt, crippling public services and letting wages stagnate. That was going so well before!

Babadookinthewardrobe · 15/02/2025 11:35

Such denial @Digdongdoo. This has been caused by the policies announced in Rachel Reeves’ budget. All the employers who are laying people off and reducing headcount all said it would happen and now it is happening.

The OP is spot on. Labour have absolutely ruined the jobs market.

Digdongdoo · 15/02/2025 11:00

Opposite experience here. DH (in employment) has been job hunting for a while, vacancies have massively ramped up recently.
If your DH isn't seeing any vacancies he needs to broaden his search and apply for more rather than assume he shouldn't bother. He obviously won't get jobs he isn't applying for...
A bit daft to be blaming labour for trying to plug the gap left by the Tories.

TheFTrain · 15/02/2025 10:51

The job market shrunk massively for my husband 2 years ago, with 70% of his industry unemployed. It's slightly better now but, according to the last set of figures, 50% of people in his his sector are still without work. In his case it's got nothing to do with a Labour government.

Parsley1234 · 15/02/2025 10:37

Rachel from accounts has stuck because she’s completely and utterly incompetent and she is a massive liar. Her Cv is a joke not one shred of truth in it it’s stuck because she’s completely incompetent it’s not misogynistic all politicians have names mostly deserving

Parsley1234 · 15/02/2025 10:33

@TieredCafe my grammar is terrible I agree
shd read
you’re a labour supporter
your husband in recruitment
you are both seeing that it’s a mess

Bubblyb00b · 15/02/2025 10:32

User32459 · 14/02/2025 22:10

Problem is for every job you're competing against the millions Labour and Tories insist on importing every year.

Thats bullshit. Zero hours type jobs - probably, yes. Professional jobs - definitely no.

Tomatotater · 15/02/2025 10:27

hettie · 15/02/2025 08:57

Labour should have gone into the election keeping open the option of raising income tax and vat. They were scared that the Tories would have pummeled them with negative messaging and voters would have shied away. So ...we got NI raises instead.
There has been an abject failure of investment across the board in the UK (private and public sector) for decades, it's crippling productivity and growth. That plus Brexit, COVID, Boris and Truss means we are a poor country with a few very rich people and an aging (so expensive in public service terms) demographic. Everyone is going to have to pay more tax and we need to move more of our share of GDP to wages from profits (too much extractive profit seeking nixes investment and productivity).
The NI raises weren't the best shot selection but they believed they were boxed in....

I agree. They tied themselves in knots with their ' no taxes on working people'. They should have taken the only policy the Tories had 'Tax cuts' and challenged it. They should have pointed out that tax cuts means no money for public services, no money for roads, police, social services etc. They didnt . They have taken a sledgehammer to crack a nut. If they wanted to ensure large corporations were paying their fair share of tax, they should have dome more to close the loopholes. If they wanted to stop the likes of Jeremy Clarkson and James Dyson parking their money in farmland to avoid Inheritance tax, they should have done that by keeping working farm machinery IHT free ( or something like that, I dont know enough about it) Now they cant backtrack on the narrative that they are trashing the economy and killing British farming.

Daisyvodka · 15/02/2025 10:23

Sorry - but I know 4 different people who have worked in marketing since leaving uni, 2 in London, one in the midlands and one in the north and they've all consistently said for the last 15 years that its an unstable industry and people get laid off etc a lot compared to other industries - there's not a lot of marketing jobs compared to other industries and a lot of competition and has always been the case. I don't think any of them have worked for less than 4 employers in those 15 years. I was under the impression that this was just the nature of the game, as it were- not sure how this could be blamed on Labour. Happy to be corrected if I am missing something here, as it's obviously not my industry personally

Tomatotater · 15/02/2025 10:21

mantaraya · 15/02/2025 08:43

@HelloMrBond as much as I agree that Labour are making some poor decisions you need to stop with the Rachel from accounts thing. She has a master's in economics which makes her considerably more qualified than many of our chancellors. It just sounds like sexist crap.

Agree. This is highly misogynistic. How many economics degrees has Jeremy Hunt got? No one even questions his background or qualifications to be Chancellor. Or Kwasi Kwarteng for that matter.

BunnyLake · 15/02/2025 10:18

You're certainly right about the supermarkets. Although it was before Labour. A two year contract office job I had ended and I was finding it difficult at the time to get another so took a zero hours job at one of the big supermarkets (through an agency). This was in 2021. When I started there were lots of other zero hours workers there too. By 2023 the work had completely dried up and there hasn't been a single vacancy for agency workers in any of my local supermarkets since. When I go into the one I worked in (now as a customer) the shop floor is almost empty (skeleton staff) and not one is agency. The only thing that is sometimes still available is night staff.

It’s all very well saying there’s loads of jobs online but most are unsuitable for one reason or another.