What is going on with the job market at the moment!

[scotchbonnetface]

100s of people applying for the same job. The salaries are abysmal and unless you have years of experience, you’ve got no chance of even being selected for interview.

There seems to be no middle ground of roles either. It’s either care work on minimum wage or senior such and such at £75k with minimum 5 years experience.

Luckily I have a job at the moment, but it’s a rocky industry and redundancy may be looming. In my 40s, I’m not sure I have it in me to retrain!

Even if I did have the energy, what sort of roles are even out there anymore?

Just needed a moan really

It's awful! I have years of experience in quite senior roles and I've been getting nowhere until recently.

Because there is a Recession going on.

I hear you! It's terrible at the moment. There are so many people applying for those middle ground roles when they do come up. This is the worst I've known it.

The issue is that we don’t have enough skilled people for the jobs we need and too many people for jobs without hard skills.

You might be right there @DiligentStrawberry but gaining skills is nigh on impossible if you can’t get in anywhere to gain those skills. Or any spare funds to pay to get new qualifications etc.

There has been a recession going on since the early 1980's, it just hasn't been reported properly as there are no actual journalists any more. Just parrots of whatever mainstream media drivel is seen as important by their owners.

Well the increased costs piled onto busineses in last years budget won't be helping. Extra NI, increases to business rates, all eat into the profits, add in the disruption caused by wars and Trump and many businesses will be looking at reducing costs and hunkering down for a rocky time. Expanding the workforce will be the last thing on the minds on many businesses.

I hear you. I’ve been having to take fixed term contracts to get anywhere - I’m in a job I enjoy at the moment but it’s fixed so insecure and on top of that there are redundancies looming so doubt I’ll get kept on. Not looking forward to having to re-enter the job market

What are you all on about?
Are you not seeing the millions of jobs being advertised? 👀
They are there, waiting to be applied for and taken up by the people who will lose some/all of their disability benefits! 🤣
Of course there will be people gaming the system, but also people who aren't.
The current and rising cost of these benefits may well be unsustainable.
But the government are also telling us that these claimants are being humiliated and thrown on the scrapheap when they would benefit so much by having the dignity of working, and we owe it to them to enable this to happen.
This is disingenuous.
There aren't the jobs for these people to apply for, so why not be honest and admit that the changes are entirely due to the need to save money?
(Sorry to derail the thread somewhat, but I really fear for these people when they cannot find work, or cannot manage their work if they lose their PIP🤷‍♀️)

Unemployment is still very low, to be frank the large amounts of applicants are mostly people still employed who want to move jobs, because they’re fed up with where they work.

Of course employer demand is also lower, taxes on employment have gone up, and many companies are figuring out how to use AI to reduce staff, given it’s got so expensive to hire people and next to impossible to fire them.

I am looking for work and it's been terrible. The employers ghosting you after an interview. I even went to an interview and all the manager kept doing was swearing and slagging off the other team. I kept silent but I wished I would have walked out needless to say I didn't get the job and was told by email from the HR team!
Another job I went to the owner was just interested in talking about her husband and men!! I had to bring it back to topic and no questions were asked of me. She ghosted me. It's so damn soul destroying. They don't ask you any questions just like to have a chat.

You will also be in competition with the youngsters whom are favored by the education centers as they are freshly done their last course and so not so much to catch up and easy to lead as little experience.

Realistically, to retrain when the computer arrived was a very good idea. Now that AI arrived, to keep that in mind is crucial.

It’s NI and the change in employment laws, I can’t employ again, so using freelancers only. Labour have made it impossible to take new people on.

The people you are talking about on benefits are not going to.see the same issue because it's the jobs classed as low or unskilled that are in a recruitment crisis that they are wanted for. It's the more skilled professionals that are struggling because there just isn't as many mid or entry level jobs for skilled professions - I was made redundant last September and it took until beginning of Feb to start a new role because everybody seems to just not want to train anyone or bring anyone. You can have years of skills like I have in my line of work and be ghosted chronically because you aren't at management level!

Then there's all the fake ads for C.V harvesting, it's not a fun time trying to find work especially as quite often hours Vs salary Vs commuting distance isn't feasible.

It’s the worst I’ve ever known it. I work in marketing and have applied for approximately 40-50 jobs this year, and have been ghosted from every single one.

It’s the first time I’ve not been able to walk from one job into the next when I wanted or needed to. Really denting my confidence.

Yep. It's odd how nobody saw this coming, or thought to mention it to the chancellor at the time. 🙄

I totally get you as I was made redundant early last September and it was 3rd Feb by the time I started a new job which I'm so grateful for because I was starting to feel like unless I way to make money on a self employed basis, it was over! I felt unemployable even though I had 15 years of H&S under my belt. As a female that's not at managerial level, that seemed to go against me.
There's all the fake job postings that never respond and are advertised for months, the ghosting was beyond a joke and that was even from people who had enthusiasm for me at interview and promised I wouldn't be ghosted!

People expect longer hours and more experience for a salary that just isn't viable especially when you take in to account some of the commutes involved. Also almost nobody wants to train or bring anyone on anymore. I actually said to one guy who made me feel crap about my experience level in an interview, if people aren't willing to bring people on, one day when many of the skilled people at managerial level have retired, there's gonna be nobody to replace them because nobody gets trained to get to that level.

I had 4 months of that prior to finally starting a new job begining of Feb this year, I felt blacklisted even though I knew wasn't!

Trouble is though is it really a big ask? Or are these employers just being greedy for cheaper labour rather than pay people enough to have a living wage and pension!

But is it impossible or are just preferring to go cheaper! Bare in mind that the reason they have upped these things is because employees need a certain amount to live on both now and when reach pension age. Theres plenty of companies recruiting people and not batting an eyelid. Labour have not made it impossible, plenty are carrying on just fine.

@AmyDuPlantier I work in advertising and honestly I’ve never known it to be this bad. I’ve made 38 people redundant over the last 4 week and now we’re impacted (albeit much less than most) with a big network loss so now have to deal with that too! I have budgets being cut left right and centre and it’s almost impossible to keep our cost base right.
I’ve gone grey in 2025.
Rest assured this isn’t you it’s the market. It’s flooded at the moment.

My niece lost her job with a big finance company. She had been there and had several promotions over 13 years. It took her 4 months to get a job with an decent salary and she had to accept much worse terms and conditions.

Oh it’s nothing to do with money it’s the new law, I’ve employed for 25+ years as an SME this leaves me so wide open I can’t risk taking people on full time employed. They have essentially taken away the probation period, if someone comes on board I have them for 3-6 months and they aren’t working out I can remove them and rehire, now I’m stuck from day one, if they are good that’s fine, if not they can bring a case.

I can’t afford to risk this, the probation period was there for a very good reason.

Unfair DismissalThe bill seeks to remove the two-year qualifying period for unfair dismissal claims, allowing employees to bring claims from day one. It also restricts employers' ability to "fire and rehire" by making it automatically unfair to dismiss an employee to replace them on varied terms.

Creative industry’s here and it’s awful.

Ds has been unemployed since June last year after graduating with a first class degree in CS. £23k ‘entry’ jobs wanting a few years experience. It’s a joke. With thousands of pounds of debt he’s thinking about doing an apprenticeship now.