Job market is awful

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.

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

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.

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.

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

I’ve only known a handful that lost their jobs recently, and they all found jobs. I was made redundant last year and got a job within weeks, and then I was poached from that job. (I work in tech). I’m not going to say it’s not hard, but IME it’s not awful either

With the number of AI data centres being built, there may be an influx of construction jobs.

Minimum wage has gone up x2 the rate of inflation since the 90s when I was a teen..actually more, my first job was £2.50 an hour in a factory kitchen, that would be £5 now and min wage is £12.71.

Sounds great but in reality employers get the work done with half as many people so half the workforce are rushed off their feet and half unable to get a job.

You are right, knowing people is often the way in. Nephew is an electrician by trade, but has widened his skills. Left the trades for twenty plus years, but recently returned. Great nephews are electrician and joiner, and friend is a plumber. They have a great set up, always working and earning well.

If anyone is looking for work in South Yorkshire, there are a few jobs advertised working for the Sheffield City Regional Mayor’s dept. Some quite senior.

https://careers.southyorkshire-ca.gov.uk

I was going to suggest supply, I did it for a few years and I still get asked if I am available for work.

Last week I was asked about a job in Guernsey with free flights and free accommodation for the term with a possibility of it continuing for a year.

Try these agencies:

Boston Rose
Jambo
99hippos
Teachers-UK
Smile
Boston Rose

Good luck to her.

Some advice I was given decades ago.

People will always be born.
People will always need to eat.
People will always die.

Jobs related to those things will always be around. They might not be your dream job, you might not be paid well but they will be there.

I met a grave digger last week. I had not really thought about who digs graves, but it is a job. He also creates headstones.

Oh, convenient. Nothing whatsoever to do with how the Conservatives ran the UK into the ground during their time in office, decimating every good thing we had and getting us to leave the EU. No bad consequences from that, no.

Its bad in some sectors but there's a shortage of supply in others.

Tech roles are easily outsourced but also easily replaceable by AI. All the IT guys everywhere ive ever worked insist on wfh then grumble when roles go to cheaper equally skilled people wfh overseas.

There's too many people in woolly roles like "transformation", "change management", "project development". Businesses have realised if you just stop doing a lot if it, life goes on and you save a load.

There are too many weak graduates from poor quality uni courses (saddled with debt that wasnt worth it) and not enough tradespeople. We need to stop encouraginhg young people with mediocre a-levels/alternatives to go and rack up 60k of debt to work in jobs that wont repay the investment.

My 20 year old daughter is at Uni but has had a Saturday job in a Tea Shop for three years. As she is generally only at Uni for half the year and for three days a week, she has applied for tons of jobs (care work, nursery asst, waitressing, pot washing) with no success. She eventually got a coffee shop, zero hour contract job at the coffee shop I frequent (after I asked them if they needed anyone)and it will just be covering absence/staff holidays.

Hmm in E London keep seeing adverts for these sorts of roles:
hospifality events type work; lorry and pick up drivers (often quite well paid with 1 licence needed eg £15-18ph); insurance sales

I wanted to be a lawyer but did know your customer in banks instead then grew career from there - grads need to just get started with something and try and craft their steps up. Nothing is perfect

agree, we’ve had offices in India for years and they’re no longer the budget option, their rates aren’t much less than in the UK. The advantage is that they work long hours (I’ve no idea if they get paid overtime for this but the guy on my current project is regularly still working at 5:30pm uk time having started at the start of an Indian work day), and work on a staggered day to us. I often send him requests in an afternoon and it’s done by the time I log in the next morning.

Daft.

Capitalism is what is pushing replacing people with AI and treating employees like replaceable communities in general

Net immigration has also fallen sharply in the UK in the past couple of years.

DH and I own construction companies, I would say construction is still a viable option if you’re physically fit and interested to learn a trade. If you can get a job / apprenticeship (as there is tons of nepotism and not enough apprenticeship spaces) it’s eventually well paid with good career progression. A lot of skilled trades have headed overseas since brexit/covid so there is a shortage at the moment.

Problem is we’re equally affected by the terrible business environment. Increase in employers ni, increase in business rates, current v high cost of utilities, tax and compliance in the UK. The current labour government have also managed to scare off a lot of the investors who were planning or just about to start large construction projects since they’ve come into power so things are not looking great at the moment. Obviously in this environment no one is hiring.

As people have left or retired from our company we’ve made the decision to not replace, we’re trying to cut back on outgoings and employing staff is a massive outgoing. A percentage of our construction staff are contractors anyway so we can let them go very easily as needed at the end of projects but our office staff are on permanent contracts. We haven’t been replacing them so as numbers have reduced we’ve started introducing AI assistants to manage larger workloads. I’d rather employ young people (especially to work over the holidays) but there’s a lot of training involved and extra insurance costs so this year we’ve only added eldest DS to the team to do a few days a week so he’s got a holiday/weekend job when he starts A Levels in September.

Its a bad picture in all sectors from what I can see.

My 16 year old has had 6 interviews and 2 trial shifts without any joy of finding a job at the moment. Shes really trying her best and its disheartening for her but she is plugging away

My oldest, a uni leaver has not tried as hard but Im looking myself for jobs in her field and nothing at all. Ive now insisted she gets at least 2 days regular volunteering to plug her cv gap.

I left a volatile sector last year and glad i did. My current sector is a little dull but it isnt shrinking.

My H was out of work for over a year after the company he worked for went bust. He's in his 50s. He eventually started being a self employed delivery delivery ( shit pay, well below minimum wage despite working hard) and did that for a while before applying for a delivery driver job in a major supermarket. This was the second time he applied for this - didn't even get an interview before being a self employed delivery driver. Got an interview this time but not the job. He is very fit and healthy and has a completely clean driving licence. I looked at the T&Cs for the supermarket delivery job and they are excellent. Including discounts of your shop with that supermarket. Supermarket delivery jobs must be the gold plated delivery job and I imagine they are inundated with applications including from gig economy self employed delivery drivers like my H.

I think women on MN who think ' supermarket' and similar jobs are easy to get and anyone can walk into them have not moved on from the 90s. The economy and the world is a very different place. These are critical jobs for the employers ( see who were core workers in Covid). Those employers want people who are likely to stay in the jobs for many years, and with unemployment as it is, they can find those people. They don' have to take on middled aged managers who have been made redundant, are depressed and will leave if they can.

Every company is looking at ways to costcut and offshoring remains popular and accesible. Also, i am surprised with Poland move; there is not much benefit from Poland cost-wise as salaries are high there.
Typical destinations these days are usual south/south-east asian suspects, Serbia, Romania.

Interesting though, I do see a lot of staff in their mid 40s or older at our Sainsbury's but also quite a lot of younger staff.

I got my most recent freelance role through LinkedIn open to work and via an old boss. I was very lucky this happened as I'd probably be still.out of work 2 years later, even though I have 20 years of publishing experience. I'd probably never get even a look in at anything else in any othet sector, I'm sure.

It used to be ok to get a retail or hospitality job when I was a teenager for some extra money. I feel so sad for the teens today, it must be incredibly disheartening.

Good for you! Everyone else must just not be trying hard enough eh?

Human biology is what is doing this. Because that leads to the technological advancements we are seeing. And those have been happening since the dawn of humanity. Since the industrial revolution we have seen a major acceleration in this. But its our human drive and ability to innovate and create that is causing it. And a rapidly increasing global economy and global jobs market. Why do you think countries compete with each other to attract successful global companies, by offering them tax breaks and advantageous terms? Its because they bring jobs.

There probably will be a painful period of adjustment for societies like ours. I am very worried for my children and their ability to get jobs.

That's been true for decades in IT with India. Lots of IT work that can't be offshore due to its nature. But yes AI is being used more in IT. My teens can't find work. It's a bit worringing