Immigration, how did we get here?

A lot of jobs are not family friendly and don't fit around school age children . Employers expect flexibility now .

It's also because workplaces expect staff to be very flexible regarding their hours and availability. Very few jobs are set hours now and fit around school age children.

Yes, and me. It was fine and l learned the worth of working.

I love your titanic example. In the middle east, people have hired help imported from poorer countries. Here we accept not to have any (so less service), and more reliant on machinery. You are totally correct that we need to either have more children, less service or increase automation.

Alternatively you can choose what governments globally have been doing for the last 40 years cause it’s easy: import labour.

The problem is not that people don’t want to work.

our workforce participation rate is nearly 80%.

our unemployment rate is around 4%.

With approximately 900k unfilled jobs in the UK, an unemployment rate of about 10% is required to fill those gaps. Keep in mind you will always have some unemployment (people unable to work, retraining etc etc) and we have very high participation rates already which suggests that very few people are taking the SAHM(D) option these days.

What there is, is simply not enough people.

Immigration isn’t because of lazy benefits scroungers. It’s because there aren’t enough people in the UK to do the number of jobs an advanced and complex economy like ours requires. The graph I posted earlier indicates that there simply aren’t enough young people. You can try making benefits less attractive, but all that does is scrape the barrel - it doesn’t magic up the numbers you need.

Have more babies, you get jobs filled. OR, increase investment in automation and higher productivity and the problem goes away that way.

a crude example: on the titanic (I rewatched titanic recently) there were approx 2k passengers for approx 1k crew. Modern cruise ships run a ratio of around 1:4 crew to passengers. Automation means that the same level of service can be provided by less people. You want to fix this? People either have to have more children, the economy offer less services, or increase automation.

Same problem across western Europe, people don't want to work these jobs.

Honest question: what's wrong with migrant workers?

Someone mentioned being in Italy and having hotel staff from Hungary, Scotland etc.

I know lots of young people from the UK who go abroad for a few years to TEFL. I know young people who have moved to have a working holiday in Australia, doing bar work and cleaning while seeing the country. Some have chosen to stay there. People from the UK going to Spain for the summer to party and do bar work. People from the UK moving to the UAE to be estate agents.

Why does the UK think immigration into the UK is the worst thing ever? Schrodinger's immigrant is both "taking all our jobs" and "taking all our benefits". People on minimum wage are somehow "pushing up house prices".

I'll be encouraging the next gen in my family to learn a trade, how to do tax returns, how to run a business etc. Actual useful things rather than the shit they learn in school. If they want to go to uni fine, but learn a recession proof trade and how to run a business as well.

Not everyone goes to uni but the narrative is white collar over blue collar- v dated!
no boy at private school is given the option to become a plumber and very few boys at a state school are encouraged to go into
private equity. The snobbery and class system has a lot to answer for.

My DD went to Uni, got a job in the NHS paying 27k, then another paying 34k, now works in Aus earning over £45k.

Even if she had stayed in the UK, private sector pay for her profession can easily pay 40k p.a ok not london banking salary but she loves her work helping other people and gets amazing job satisfaction.

Its such a shame the NHS treats its staff so badly.

The uk is about on par with most other countries on numbers who go to Uni @37%, thats 63% who can do trades etc etc... the problem is our education system is crap and churns out students who either don't want to work hard or are simply no good to employers.

The idea everyone goes to Uni simply isn't true.

We need a push to change the mindset that benefits are to be lived on and are a lifestyle. Benefits should be a stopgap, unless disabled or elderly. They, and housing, and NHS healthcare should also only be available to immigrants that have paid in for a certain amount of time, or while they are paying in, as is the case in some countries in Europe.

And lets all be honest here, the people this thread is aimed at are the ones that have no disability issues but still refuse to work, think cleaning or packing or labouring etc are beneath them (while contributing nothing) for no reason.

I agree that these people should be trained and forced to the do the menial jobs we are having to recruit immigrants for. Why can't they do them?

It’s worth thinking about the workforce in 18 years as dc born now enter it

Which as you say higher automation and AI likely

Demographics. It’s very straightforward- if people have less children, then over time it causes labour issues. You either have to dramatically increase the amount of automation, or face labour shortages. Where the demographic profile is smoothed out rather than a pyramid, the lack of labour manifests itself in the following generations. The solution of using ever younger labour is not viable for the majority of jobs (manual labour, bar staff, etc etc).

Responsible means you aren't supposed to leave your kids without supervision. Some do, but then it's the parents responsibilty. Clearly, with a work situation, they can't really ask the parents to be present (or semi-present).

You can get away with this if parents are made responsible. We do that with the other shows.

I'm guessing they won't because of safe guarding. I don't deal with the administration,but my DC is in a club that has a winter show. Everyone helping with the children must have enhanced DBS checks. There are also chaperones from the county council. All the children must be signed in and out with a register. This all stops at 16. Those 16+ have no chaperones and are allowed to wander off site.

In no right mind will an employer hire anyone that requires this much hassle.

I agree (apart from the B&H 😁). Thing is it’s not even 16 for some jobs, DS2 has been turned down for a few for being 17.

Part of the reason that smaller numbers went to university in the 80s was because women formed a much smaller proportion of the student population. In the late 70s when I went it was 1 in 10. The norm was for women to go into traditional roles like nursing or secretarial work (obviously not now as much of an option), or low paid work in the expectation they would get married and become SAHM. Even the Head of my very selective Girls’ Grammar School gave us the advice that if we went into Medicine we would lessen our marriage prospects. A lot of those extra university places were taken up by women becoming 50 % of the university population, and then entering the work force longer term in much bigger numbers. And some low paid jobs are now done by students, certainly in this area where a high proportion do go to university. So universities are not part of the issue. Indeed it is now much harder to get into university, because a larger proportion of the population, of both sexes) are competing for those places

Also remember that the service sector has expanded massively, There simply wasn’t the same need for people to work in low paid jobs in for instance the hospitality industry. That was Tory thinking from Thatcher onwards, that we would become a service economy and needed immigration to enable that until the current batch, ironically sank her plans (because they didn’t understand the meaning of the word plan, too busy being populists).

Exh has carers & out of the various care companies he has been under in 12 years, I can only remember maybe 3 of the carers who looked after him being British, the rest have all been immigrants, nobody wants to be a carer, the pay & conditions are rubbish, you only get paid for the time you are actually caring, not travelling between clients. Councils will only pay minimum wage, which doesn't help. Until caring becomes a profession with a standard training pathway & qualification, then they will always have problems with recruitment & retention.

Same all over Europe and tbh a lot of jobs which were good 25 yo ago are sh*t today and only immigrants with no options will do them.

I’m degree qualified and earned 35k before kids, but I would barely break even after childcare so I didn’t work for five years. Women who would earn less definitely can’t work. You have to be pretty highly paid to be better off working and paying childcare - better paid than average anyway.

The benefit thing is insane. You can’t sign off and back on easily. You can’t sign off for a while to take a temp job then claim again. You’re not allowed to work for free to gain experience. And if you earn a single penny they take it off you, so there’s no incentive to do a little bit of work that might lead to more.

It isn’t really possible for under 18s to work any more because of child safeguarding laws. Stuff like not being left alone with people who haven’t been DBS checked, needing separate changing rooms to adults, etc. It’s just too much hassle.

To answer OP’s question though, employers don’t respect and support their manual employees any more. They pay them as little as possible, even going to far as to put them on zero hour contracts or make them “self employed” so they don’t have to pay them properly. No decent pensions etc. No loyalty or support. It’s unsurprising that people don’t want these jobs any more.

Secondly there are other ways to earn money nowadays. Only Fans. Sell on Etsy or EBay. Various side hustles. Why would anyone take a crap min wage job.

Thirdly as pp said, pushing everyone to get a degree means they expect better than a min wage job.

I went to grammar school in the 80s. 8% of our cohort went to university. It was pretty unusual.

Most of the girls went into nursing (no degree required - block release for college and learning on the job), teaching (teacher training college), or bank/post ofgice/insurance.

The boys did apprenticeships, joined the forces or went down the bank/insurance route.

Many of the kids who would have traditionally gone down the apprentice route end up at university, and are not necessarily the better off for it.