Job market is awful

I know. How can be people be so dumb as to think it's a Labour issue created in the last two years?

When I was a teenager you could get a weekend job washing dishes in a nursing home or in Tesco/Homebase/Sainsbury's/Debenhams then bar work once you turned 18.

Now so few shops have manned tills (even Matalan and Boots push you to self service), pubs and cafes now want staff who can work day shifts as well as weekends and evenings these jobs are slowly disappearing. I rarely see teenagers working at weekends.

Once into adulthood it's shit, for every job vacancy you can have hundreds of applicants. Companies only recruit internally so a team somewhere will be understaffed which puts pressure and stress on those remaining staff which pushes them into the job market.

Even at my work when one of us leaves they only recruit internally or just distribute the work among the remaining staff.

I'm looking at the moment, and have had agencies say they haven't had any PA/EA jobs through in months, if they do it's part time or tagged on to another job role. I was asked if I wanted to start looking at Administrator jobs.

Interviews are few and far between, you get ghosted, the feedback (if you get any) is rubbish. I had one interview and was told "she wasn't right for us" nothing else. Then the same job is readvertised (several times) so companies seem to want a unicorn employee.

I'm lucky I have a job (even if it is making me depressed and seriously unhappy because it has been slowly eroded away) and I'm interviewing for a lovely job which I really want (2nd interview stage) but it's so hard to keep going.

I also see productivity going down. Why should people invest at work when they can see that the company can’t wait to get rid of them as soon as AI is developed enough to do their jobs. So it’s also a very demotivated work market at the moment.

Of course it is bad.

We let millions of EU workers in, we then outsourced hundreds of thousands of jobs to India.

We then had the Boris wave and the current ‘skilled’ immigration.

We have the increasing MW and the NI increase making it difficult to hire.

It’s like Jenga. You can’t go on pulling out bits and expect the structure to hold.

And that’s before the big AI sledgehammer.

Can you say a bit more specifically which roles are in growth currently? Be really interested to know.

I’m in the SE. My DS has applied for labouring jobs, cleaning, warehousing…. ghosted every time! No point applying for care work as a young male because people assume all men are wrong ‘uns. My DS is brilliant either way my elderly relatives but care homes always specify females.

The job market is in a dreadful state. I expected artificial intelligence to cause serious disruption, and it has done precisely that.

I feel deeply for the younger generation, particularly those who genuinely want to work, contribute, and build a decent future.

I do not know what the solution is yet, and it's worrying.

It'll be the new degree in 10 years, although lots of nepotism in trades.

Yes seeing this in two generations in my family. Child 1 who has had part time jobs since 15, loads of experience in retail and hospitality, has really struggled to find a summer job this time around. Been asked to do free ‘trial’ shifts in several places or had agencies requiring her to do hours of online training with no guarantee of any work after. Graduates next year and I have no idea what she will find for work.

For myself I moved out of education into the third sector two years ago. Took a substantial pay cut at the time thinking I would claw it back and the salary hasn’t moved.. they just say they can’t afford to pay more. I’ve had another company I freelance for try to poach me.. but they won’t pay any more either. I’m earning the same as I was about twenty years ago and honestly at nearly 50 had hoped not to still be watching every penny till pay day.

Companies have to be competitive or they won't win contracts.

Companies are waiting to hear what Burnham is going to do. There is a hiring freeze all over the place.

Yep I want to look for a new role because I feel like my company is taking the piss regarding my pay. However the job market round me isn’t great, the role itself is fine and it’s a stable job with a large company so it’s fairly secure. But I feel so undervalued by the whole process I just want out and I can’t bloody find anything!

i work at Amazon and the vast majority of people there are Indian. I’d say about 98%. Local people can’t get in because bots are snapping up the jobs applications then selling them for £200.

Can someone explain how this works?

I also work in Pharma and am finding that even though AI has changed the way we are doing certain things the bigger impact on my company is being outside of the EU so our base is slowly moving from the UK to mainland Europe.

there are negotiations going on with the government to get more benefits to stay in the UK if successful you may see the job market in Pharma pick up.

It's really bleak. But I think you should be blaming Brexit for the havoc it was caused not Indian workers.

Well they definitely do as my husband worked at tesco for a while when between jobs.

But if I train up a grad then chances are they'll move on in a couple of years and I'm back to square one. That's fine for a big company but, for a small company like mine, it's a nightmare. I don't have the resources to be hand holding people every day.

In a few years Claude and friends will be filling every role, skills gaps won’t exist.

To someone who mentioned British companies offshoring...do we have any substantial British companies??

UBI will be a necessity for the millions unable to find work

Don't we have this already with the benefits system? The country is struggling to pay for existing claimants at the current level let alone enhanced payments for more people.

Generally, people have ignored the news when it's announced that UK productivity is very poor, this leads to less companies wanted to invest in the UK, which leads to the GDP growth at currently is almost zero. Without growth there are no jobs.

The recent increase in NI without a doubt impacted employers, mine reversed hiring as they felt the decisions by Labour, especially rushing through the changes without a period of notice meant the UK was not a safe place to invest.

The lack of stability in UK finances due to government spending is a major factor as borrowing costs rise so impacts employers.

Labour can't make the UK finances stable as the voter base won't allow it...which is why most people are pessimistic

Construction is a UK sector that has less risk of AI but rarely considered by UK people. Someone else mentioned that machine drivers are highly in demand. Also military roles, not everything is combat as many areas which could appeal to active young people.

I think the volume of Uni students does have to reverse. I've hired many students with degrees that didn't provide enough (or any skills) for the job market.

You do know the poster is talking about British Companies not hiring people in Britain, where their business is? It could be Poles in Britain. It’s geography that’s the point.

Gosh the literacy of people on here is staggering sometimes.

You are absolutely right, there seems to be a renewed push to send jobs to India. My own employer has outsourced many entry level admin posts, not only making hundreds of UK employees redundant but also removing what were traditional graduate entry roles. Not sure how these companies expect to thrive without people in the UK able to earn a living though

Its worse if you're disabled. You're a less attractive candidate. I have multiple qualifications and experience across lots of sectors and since being made redundant last year, I've only managed to pick up two freelance gigs - both of which took the absolute piss with workload and hours they were willing to pay.

I blame several factors - Rachel Reeve's increase in employer's national insurance, Trump's tariffs, Trump's wars, Trump's crackdown on D&I initiatives (knock on effect on global charities which is the sector where I used to work).

The price being charged around our area could afford to come down quite a bit!

I guess the thing is if there is a landslide of people who try and do the trades, then there will be a race to the bottom in terms of prices. And there won’t be enough work for everybody. It isn’t really a simple as everybody who’s not going to be able to find Work getting a trade. This is a much wider problem.