AIBU to think redundancy crisis is not getting enough media coverage?

We're due a war soon. Things cant carry on like this.
@kwikfitt

Civil war or a war against another country?

Crikey where was this? In our school we can't get cleaners for love nor money. They always had issues getting reliable ones and would often not turn up loads of sickness so outsourced it and they are even worse! We didn't have any for ages, the caretaker ended up hoovering and emptying bins himself. It's the same at lots of schools. I imagine the hours aren't appealing to many, maybe not enough hours. Who knows. Perhaps it depends on area of the country if there's more choice of jobs or not.

Not where I work. The last 6 redundancy waves (all in the last 10 years) were all about the same size, the same for everyone else I know (all big consumer goods companies). It’s brutal every time, but utterly predictable - we just came out of one, the next one should be autumn 2027/spring 2028.

The BBC have just done a big piece about unemployed women in their 50s.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cyvl8y141e4o

The state of HE is a catastrophe in itself, let alone all the other industries struggling.

Going back to the OP's original question, yes there are huge numbers of redundancies, and yes there should be more coverage and support. Downsides of that are:

1. The govt doesn't want to draw more attention to the mess their budget created.
2. Hearing endless doom & gloom wouldn't help with confidence.

I am 63. I was very lucky to find a new full time role after my last employer went bust during covid. Now I'd say my chances are tiny to none despite a degree, a professional qualification, 40 years experience and a clean bill of health.
I will have to rely on my pension and hope I pick up something part time. Many are not so lucky.

The numbers are far worse in recent years imo

I’ve been in big companies for the last 20 years (3 different ones), redundancy waves come like clockwork every 18-24 months. Nothing has changed in my opinion, its just how big companies work.

Plenty of work in construction. Encouraging your sons and daughters to do apprenticeships would be the sensible option to future proof them. Doing IT jobs, accounting, most computer base jobs is pointless most of those jobs will be gone soon. Too late for me I work in finance, I suspect my job will be gone in a few years but my other half is in construction earning good money so we will be ok.

They pay more than statutory redundancy in order to get a mutual agreement. It is legal and non reportable because they can state that it is due to economic conditions ie uk workers are too expensive and technically not a redundancy. Happy to be corrected by an HR expert, but have been through similar processes many times.

I was made redundant may 2025 but kept on retention until August 2025
started new job sept 2025 (they waited from May for me) and made redundant from there nov 2025
started new job nov 2025 (out of work 9 days) and hoping that’s the end of it!

I have just been through a huge redundancy that outsourced a huge process to was to India, same redundancy wave took out the whole of software engineering to third party products, probably about 7/600 people over the last two years. Whilst I can understand that there might be smaller companies that possibly don't follow the correct processes, it's probably not on the same scale or level that corporate companies are doing it right now at the moment.
Also how can you call something a redundancy crisis is it's not being called redundancy on an official level? That's a different problem that needs to be investigated.

Same reply as when it was posted above-

did You read it?
“The Home Office scheme allows registered employers to recruit workers from overseas who meet a certain skill level. The rules were tightened in July 2025 to restrict the scheme mostly to graduate-level employees who would be earning at least £41,700”
“More than 100 of those businesses were added to the skilled worker sponsorship list after the rules were tightened. Being on the register does not mean applications for individual visas would be approved.”

My company and my previous one are offshoring IT to India. And lots of other roles too. Ai and cheaper people in India and Eastern Europe

Yea....that was my point.

Indian based consultancy ? A lot of companies are not calling it redundancy because they would have to declare it and it is by way of a separation agreement and therefore dont have to announce/declare it.
Also its not just AI, it is cheaper resources in other countries, proof will be in how long this arrangement persists for if the uk ever stats to recover. This has happened in previous recessions, but the quality of work produced was then dire. Maybe that will have changed, but from my recent interractions there is still a ways to go.

Well then it is likely to be a sham redundancy, because a role is redundant not a person.

Is there any need for this reply? Its a fact a lot of employers are using redundancies more to get rid of certain employees. Thats all I was saying. I didnt realise only mass layoffs are shit 🙄

This. 👏🏻

Unless you are employed in a small number of occupations such as a Judge or an airline pilot there is no retirement age, only state pension age. You can defer your state pension and receive more or claim your state pension and continue working; obviously tax implications. Both my DGD and DF worked part time until their 80s.

Hardly. When Rachel Reeve put up NI, increased the NMW and scared the disabled community witless talking about limiting PiP, my employer mothballed a factory and halved the workforce.

I would have said the same till I read this

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj639rx147eo

It’s not just redundancies due to AI etc
People are coming out of retirement/working for longer, couples with with children both needing to work (when I was growing up (80’s) families would usually have a Mum at home whilst the children were small).
Added to the increases in NI and minimum wage many places are doing the same amount of work with less staff.
We have a family business, as people have left, they haven’t been replaced. We are working longer hours ourselves and drafting in family members who are retired to help on busy days during the season.

I was talking to a friend that manages a cleaning company, they were looking got 1 person to work 4-8 in a school. For that one job they had over 300 applicants in 24 hours. It was a mixture of people looking to take on second jobs, parents that were looking for jobs around childcare, older people looking to top up pensions and people that had been out of work due to redundancies, desperately looking for anything to tie them over.

I was 19 in 1990 too.

I worked in shops, but not clothes shops as they looked boring!. If I didn’t like one I just went to another and got taken on. I went to university at 21 and did the same thing there, just went into town and had a word with a few managers and got a job in a bookshop that fit around my course. Smart uniform, staff canteen, the works.

It sounds like a fantasy world now.

NI hike + higher minimum wage + AI boom + tougher employment laws = job losses + fewer hires