Obviously a very deep subject, so I'm prepared for this question to be completely blown out the water by the more knowledgeable. But a few things I was thinking about:
- Most of the vacancies left unfilled by immigrants returning home will likely be skilled labour/blue collar jobs rather than professional occupations, so more opportunities there - e.g. truck drivers.
- The ever more lucrative truck driving vacancies (up to £60k-£80k for arctics, and even £50k for some smaller Class 2 wagons) will likely be filled by people in blue collar roles - forklift drivers etc.
- WFH has demonstrated that companies can potentially become leaner in a way that can't be done with say a security guard or shop assistant who needs to be at their post for the full 12 hours.
- Continuing from above point, many companies may have previously believed that they needed managers physically onsite to be effective, but may now instead have one manager covering two sites and cut the number of managers going forward.
- WFH may also have demonstrated that in some cases the job could be done from India/the Philippines at a much lower cost.
- Many people believe that as much can be achieved in a six hour working day as a full day, so companies may just try and work more efficiently with less staff.
- Many of (obv not all) the 'essential' services are more blue collar - waste management, care work, infrastructure, etc.
My previous employer (big waste management company) are at 97% of.the turnover they had before covid and I expect the small downturn is partly due to staff sickness/absence. They're aggressively buying out all the smaller companies going bump and will no doubt benefit immensely over next few years.
Current company (construction/aggregates) are aggressively recruiting and the building of newbuild estates seems to be blasting full speed ahead. Very busy on the concrete side too and apparently HS2 just can't get enough concrete at the rate they're working.
It all seems a very different story to the doom and gloom I often read on here. I wonder if I'm just in fortunate job or if there is a trend here.