Staff shortages - why?

[Buttalapasta]

I've just read the thread on pharmacist shortages. My mum's GP practice has cut its opening hours due to shortages and the local pub now closes at 9 for the same reason! Why? I know Brexit had some impact but surely not this much? Is it down to poor wages? Early retirement? It seems strange that so many places can't seem to get staff yet they aren't offering higher wages? Any economists know?

People in their late 50s caught the tail-end of the benefits such as MIRAS, were able to get into the property market before it went silly, etc. Their parents in the Boomer generation are now dying and this is releasing some of the accumulated wealth from the '80s and '90s.

I’m in my fifties and 7 of my friends took early retirement during or just after covid. They ranged from 52 to 58. Mainly academic staff in 2 red brick Universities though one was high up in University IT services, a primary school teacher and an engineer. An absolute wealth of experience, nothing will induce them back. My DH is younger than me and was just a bit too young. If they offer redundancies again in 2 years hence he will be putting himself forward.

@freyamay74 This is exactly what happened with almost all my friends as apart from one at 52 and one at 58 they all hit 55 as redundancy was offered. They will obviously get their state pensions eventually but they do not need to claim anything as all self funded.

I’ve noticed this too. Local employers like supermarkets that used to be jobs for mums in school hours and students evenings and weekends now all seem to want full time, fully flexible staff. I think you have to pay more like Aldi or accept a trade off that people willing to work for minimum wage are going to require flexibility from you as an employer.

The benefits system itself in terms of universal credit incentives work. You keep 45p for every £1 earned as additional income.If you have children or are ill you can earn either £344 a month if you rent or £573 if you don’t before that applies. You can get help with childcare as soon as you are working 85% up to £646 for one child more for two. If there are no other reasons such as being a carer you are expected to work from youngest is three years old.

However that doesn’t count for extra costs of working such as transport. Childcare costs need 15% paid are often more than that minimum if you can find it. At quite low levels of work things like free school meals stop. Add that lot and work may not pay.

there has been muich talk of people giving up work during covid, taking early retirement, becoming carers for their relatives

Thank you for this- I have been wondering about it for a while!

Buttalapasta - your suggestions would certainly help some sectors, I agree. But we have to tackle the benefits system. If I get my rent, CTax, free school meals for my kids and ££ a week and can still be around for my kids, have free time, not have to commute etc - why would I work. (Unless work paid double what I'd get - which it won't)

We also have to properly train people and pay employers to do this. Perhaps by way of more proper combined work/study courses. So three years training in a bank - from the basics, working in several departments - and studying basic banking, customer service, figures, law etc. Or three years working for Sainsbury's doing shop floor, warehouse, deliveries AND studying retail, marketing, customer service etc. Or joining the local council, doing six months on the phones, in the planning or recycling and studying basic law, etc etc. Paid.

But these positions don't exist in the way that they used to. And not in the numbers they need to. We need youngsters to do this straight from school.

In regards to pharmacists it’s because the salary has eroded greatly over the last ten years or so because there is no cap on places at university, having lots and lots of pharmacists and not many jobs drove the salary down, working hours are long, it’s a stressful job with a lot of responsibility, lots of abuse from the public and more and more responsibility being piled on in order to “free up GPs”.

It’s no longer an attractive career option for many, especially considering how difficult the degree is. I’m a HCP, I’ve worked at a pharmacy, my cousin and one of my friends is a pharmacist, it’s not a job I would ever do personally for all the reasons above.

High resource degrees like pharmacy, chemistry, biomedicine cannot just increase numbers as there isn't lab space/availability to teach them. They are expensive to create even if you have the built estate, they need to be safely staffed. Can't chuck hundreds of inexperienced 18 year old in a lab with one supervisor! Injury would ensue pretty much immediately!

All the factors mentioned already. Also the pandemic, the still tangible effects of the 2008 financial crisis, erosion of workers conditions, cost of living, global housing shortage and austerity have exposed the inequality of late era capitalism. Jeff Bezos had to award his ex wife half his fortune on divorce yet emerged from the pandemic even richer than pre divorce. All recent wealth has ended up in the hands of the 1%. Vote Labour would be a start for those in the UK. Maybe then the public might benefit from some actual policies that might improve daily life and give people a buy in to a society (and motivation to work )that is currently operating to benefit the already rich. The UK is consumed by the toxic Tory psychodrama that is failing to deliver anything to help the populace thrive

I agree @NearlyMidnight
Companies just don't take on and train there own staff with quality training programmes leading to qualifications these days.
They just want someone in for the role they have, there's no planning for the future. Even entry level jobs ask for experience in many sectors!

We saw that with the HGV driver shortage. The Gov were telling all the haulage companies they'd had 2 years to plan for Brexit but they'd continued to hire in highly skilled drivers from Poland with no thought what would happen when they could no longer do that.

@LolaMoon It is not always inheritances some dabble in the stock market or have very good pensions that can be drawn now at 55. I have just written how lots of my friends have retired early and one couple were absolute winners with their investments. We also invest but in a smaller and less risky way and started very young. The amount we can draw in two years if we want to is far more than 20k PA.

The other thing of note is six of the seven are couples that all got together at a relatively young age 30 or younger and have stayed together. All that dual income for over 30 years. All of them have also relocated, some more than once in their lives.

This.
People are fed up of giving their whole lives over to someone else's profit margin and getting the bare minimum in return, they're fed up of being treated like a necessary evil rather than an asset.

And many are sick of the abuse directed at them by the general public and the attitude "But you get paid " to justify it.

And so many employers are sticking their heads in the sand, refusing to change and then wringing their hands and whining because they can't get and keep staff.

So many jobs have been put down for so long, the people doing them told they're unimportant and not worth anything much, treated badly and demoralised, paid the bare legal minimum and expected to give their all and be grateful for the opportunity - and now there's surprise that no one wants to do those jobs and be treated like that.

Even on here, you see "Get a better job" as a response to poor pay and conditions in the workplace instead of recognising that treating people decently will encourage them to engage and do a good job, and stay in that job, well many have done exactly that and left the workforce all together or moved on to somewhere they're treated fairly, and there isn't a queue of people waiting in the wings to take their place as was always assumed, and this is the result. As a society we've devalued so much that we rely on.

Companies just don't take on and train there own staff with quality training programmes leading to qualifications these days.
We need to re-align some qualifications in the education system, and introduce new ones that the workplace needs. Warehousing and logistics is a huge part of the economy, but try and find a college qualification that includes either fork-lift truck driving or HGV driving.

It is different factors for different industries.

I think we are missing the bottom and the top in that fewer 16-18 (and sometimes older) students are no longer taking part time jobs.

At the upper end, those who should have had five to 10 years left to work saved enough during lockdown to pay off mortgages or realised they were happy at home/ with a simpler life (given increased covid deaths may also have come into inheritance).

This is coupled with more people returning to their home countries. I know several people happy to stay after Brexit but who just wanted to be closer to family again after covid.

And in many industries employers have been slow to adapt. One of the positives of Brexit/ staff shortages is that the days of 'it's 25 hours a week but we expect you to be available 7am to 10pm every day' are ending.

I think universal credit is good in making work pay but sometimes it's not worth it to work full time so we are losing hours there as well.

@LolaMoon
Some people will have planned for early retirement and have lots of savings , private pensions etc

For other people this is made possible by an inheritance - the figure you are suggesting of £240,000 is the price of a fairly modest home in most parts of the country . If someone has no siblings they wouldn't need to come from a particularly rich family to inherit this much . Particularly if retiring late 50s and with a small workplace pension to add to this .

You don't need that much to live on. Me and dh have had to retire early due to autism and we both manage on less than 18k a year for the both of us. No benefits, mortgage or debt and live a frugal lifestyle and we have a young adult ds at home to support. We get by.

DP was made redundant in 2020 after working for the company for 20 years. He has applied for so many jobs both within the industry he worked in and others. The only interviews he's had are from companies who don't ask for the age of the applicant. Although he performs well at the interviews ( as confirmed by the feedback), there is always the same killer question "are you on any medication?" to which he always answers truthfully "yes, to control my epilepsy".....interview terminates at that point. The irony is, many of the jobs he's been rejected for repeatedly come up again on Indeed. If only they had the balls to employ a 51 year old epileptic with the skills and experience to do the job they wouldn't be wasting so much time and money.

The people I know over 55 who have retired early are doing it because they've taken their occupational pension early, and accepted the fact it's somewhat reduced through early withdrawal. Many of them have downsized their housing as kids are grown. Some are living the dream of coastal or rural living now they don't need to commute. I honestly think the govt have little hope of enticing these people back to work.

I can quite see the attraction! I've worked full time for years, I pay 12 % of my salary into my occupational pension, I'm fully paid up with my NI..... I mean, I'm still paying several hundred pounds NI every month and it won't directly benefit me at all- I'll get the full stats pension at 67 whether I slog my guts out for another decade or if i stop work now. You can't blame people who can self fund their retirement for taking it early.

The challenge with this topic is that what we all consider a decent wage in retirement is totally different. Some of us are still funding dependents. Others have downsized and are living their best lives at 50.
Having seen the state of many retirement homes, I’m saving for the best quality care I can afford as I get older. If I don’t need it, my kids will get it.

Interesting point. I think exempting workers who have paid their full years of NI contributions would be worth thinking about. It’s a significant amount of money now, much more than it used to be.

Their workload has increased a lot, partly due to the knock-on effects of Covid, but mainly because so many people are unable to get a GP appointment they are going to the pharmacist to ask for their advice. The queues for the pharmacy counter in the several chemists close to me are ludicrously long, because it takes much longer to serve someone asking for advice about a health condition than it does to hand over prescription or sell behind-the-counter medications. They then get a backlog of prescription orders to fulfil and no time in which to do it. The one in our village closes for two hours from 12-2 so they can catch up, and also have a bit of a break.

How would that work though? @GCAcademic State pension age keeps moving out, mine is 67 & Ive paid it since 17. Younger generations will have to keep working & paying NI as there's not enough of them. In the 60s it was 5 workers to 1 pensioner, now I think it's 3:1. There are already more over 65 yr olds than under 15s.

I agree with you, but if NI payments are one of the things motivating people who’ve paid their full contributions to leave the workforce and significantly reduce the amount of income tax they pay (as well as removing their labour from essential public services) then I think it’s worth considering. Though, of course, all that will happen then is that, as well as increasing the pension age, governments will start increasing the number of years you need to contribute for, so it’s probably a non-starter.

Theres a weird contradiction with NI. You have to pay for 35 years to get “your” pension, but essentially you’re paying for other people’s (and hoping to god that the state pension isn’t scrapped by the time your turn comes).

Theres a weird contradiction with NI. You have to pay for 35 years to get “your” pension, but essentially you’re paying for other people’s (and hoping to god that the state pension isn’t scrapped by the time your turn comes)

I think this is going to become a big issue. You will have NHS staff thinking do I stay here & put up with shit pay, high costs & a retirement slipping further & further away or go abroad.