Staff shortages are now a national crisis

[Confusedofbritain]

Staff shortages across many sectors is now a national crisis surely? I’ve given up expecting anything of this government, but why isn’t Labour beating them with a stick over this?

Some examples which affect me personally….

• Can’t go on holiday due to cancelled flight, cause by lack of ground staff.
• I work for NHS trust and we have closed a ward due to c 50% vacancies. We have plenty of money but can’t spend it. Now competing with other trusts paying increasingly high golden handshakes.
• Tried to book restaurant for Tuesday birthday. Not possible as all places shut Monday and Tuesday due to short staff (esp chefs).
• Poor service when we do go out. Staff look frazzled.
• Can’t get a builder to do an extension. Often not bothering to quote. Builder friend can’t keep labourers and brickies. Paying increasingly high wages but getting poached.
• Window fitter quoted me 2x higher than 2019 (for a much smaller window!) probably because they’re so busy and can’t increase capacity due to lack of staff. So prices have gone up by 100%.
• Long delay in discharge for father from hospital, due to long waits for care package (caused by staff shortages). He was in hospital a lot longer than necessary and declined hugely as result.

It’s largely caused by Brexit, partly people retiring or changing livelihood during Covid…:.but why wasn’t this anticipated and what are we doing about it?

I want to see posters EVERYWHERE encouraging people to consider NHS careers. It’s a rewarding career, but impossible to cope and keep going with so few staff. We are escalating to NHS England constantly, saying we need a national solution. It’s beyond critical, but I’m not confident that there is a national drive to sort this out.

The economic and social consequences of ignoring this massive structural issue will be disastrous!

One thing I have noticed amongst young people is more choosing to work in the gig economy, not traditional jobs. eg. Influencers on SM, deliveroo drivers, bitcoin trading, hustling ie matched betting, online sex work through sites such as only fans. Perhaps these opportunities have taken younger people out of the more traditional workforce?

Also shop workers is where the money is good now!! Asda, aldi, Lidl and McDonald’s are paying a good wage!! People would rather do that than work other jobs that pay less.

We have two teaching posts we can't fill! We will have to get supply in September at this rate.

Nothing to do with Australia's very strict immigration policy?

People want flexibility and a lot of traditional jobs refuse to move with the times and give it

Pre-Covid our very busy GP surgery had around 20 or so GPs on their rota and at least half a dozen in the surgery at any one time.

Now you are lucky if there's one or two, and they have cut the opening hours as well.

Where have all the GPs gone?

The long term unemployed could work in farming, agricultures, factory work, be trained to be lorry drivers, cleaners work in restaurants or the millions of other jobs for the unskilled. They won't gain confidence, people skills, budgeting until they have actually started to do a day's work will they! They are a massive drain on our country, and most people think so. The government now needs to absolutely insist on full employment - and cut benefits to zero if they won't work. Our country is an easy ride for lazy people.

Tell is you’re a Tory without saying you’re a Tory, eh.

How will those people work if they don’t have childcare support? Who will look after them? If they get out in child care would the cost of that eat up their whole pay packet? (You can bet your arse it would, wages are not high enough these days!)

Every single person claiming should be offered a choice of five roles most suited to them and benefits gone, that would get the country moving again.

We have a workforce sitting right there that we are already paying to stay at home. It is ridiculous.

@Swayingpalmtrees you really don’t have a clue do you!

Yes, and that in turn drives inflation, which causes people to look for higher salaries elsewhere. It's a bit of a vicious circle.

The Bank of England asked employers to exercise restraint with regard to wage rises because of the effect on the wider economy, but employers need to be able to retain their staff and employees need to earn enough to live. So what are we supposed to do?!

There was a lot of talk from Brexiteers about moving to a higher wage economy. Well, we're certainly going in that direction but did they anticipate that they would be paying for those higher wages through the hugely inflated costs that we're now dealing with?

Yep long term unemployed need a LOT of support to be job ready.

Often struggle with low self confidence and will not be able to control emotions or conduct themselves well in customer service/ professional environment, due to social problems/ challenges. Often inter-generational. Basically, you wouldn’t want to be served by someone in this position (if they turn up to work at all) and the employers would quickly run out of patience.

To get the long term unemployed job ready, takes a lot of time from specialist workers to unpick barriers, develop life skills. But ironically we don’t have the staff for these roles!!

Okay I’m starting to think @Swayingpalmtrees is trolling us by pretending to be a daily mail commenter. No one can think it’s this simple, surely?!

I am sure the pp arguing all the reasons why they can't lift themselves from the sofas are the claimants that want to keep things as they are.

Well, no sorry. We all have to work. The backlash is going to be huge in the winter if we are paying astronomical taxes to heat the homes of people that can't be bothered to contribute! Trust me it is coming. No one can sponge from the state for years, and sit back and let everyone else struggle whilst they do absolutely nothing.

forest one message for you dear: get a bloody job!

“It’s shit for me so let’s make it shit for everyone else too”

or we could…improve working conditions, tackle the mental health crisis, look into the abysmal cost of childcare, invest in better educational systems, pay people a living wage, make public transport more reliable and affordable so people can actuallt get to work….

There is no point arguing with ignorance of the type displayed by @Swayingpalmtrees. She isn't willing to engage with the reality of what life is like for people who are long term employed because she isn't actually interested. She just wants to be able to complain about them and feel superior.

lost track of the number of experienced social workers who have left recently. I know lots of people who retired because they could just about afford it, whereas in previous years they might have waited until they were 65 to top up their pensions as much as possible. They are going because of the stress and pressure they're under, but also because they've realised that life is uncertain and why would you slog your guts out in a broken system for not very much more money?

l was a teacher. I was going to keep going. But when l looked at my pension and my earnings, l was working for 40 quid a week. No brainer. The stress and conditions were hideous.

Why would inflation increase with the cost pay of higher wages??

wages and cost of living used to be roughly on par. Then the cost of living went up over years and years and wages stagnated, so would raising them now to be on par once again increase the cost of living more when they are just evening out again? I don’t get that?

if you work full time you should be able to afford a place to live and to put food on the table for your family, it’s that simple really, otherwise why work??