Why are there so many job vacancies??

[Manyanaish]

Where we live businesses are sending fb messages to say that they are having to reduce opening hours due to lack of staff .. they are paying well above minimum wage ( £ 16 ph) , and are doing this to protect staff they have as they are pushed all the time.
the businesses that are sating this locally to us did not rely on pre brexit conditions . So .. what is going on ?

I agree with this. Wages simply aren't keeping pace with inflation.

I don't believe in £16 an hour vacancies. Haven't seen one.
Is that to wait tables in a restaurant in Mayfair?

I work long night shifts to make more than customary £11.00 an hour. Even then it doesn't stretch to 16 quid.
In fact, I'd jump ship at £15 for a daytime job.

I struggle to believe there are multiple businesses with £16 an hour basic hospitality jobs. Perhaps the OP could come back and screenshot some of them for us.

Unemployment is super low at the moment so basically there just aren't as many people to fill the vacancies. Only about 1.2m people. They are probably in the wrong places - so just not where the vacancies are.

We're still down about 330k foreigners since brexit

On top of that 8.5 m Uk adults 16-64 don't have a job and aren't looking for one. Of them 22% say they would like to find a job but don't think there is one that would fit round their illness or caring commitment.

the split of inactive people is:

27%) are students. 26% say they’re economically inactive because they’re too sick (most of whom have a long-term illness). 22% are looking after family or the home. And 13% have taken early retirement.
12% said there was some other reason for their economic inactivity.

Brexit.

£16 an hour is 30k a year

@Daffodilwoman it absolutely does not. I'd work for less than I currently receive.

I get threats of sanctions constantly. I get text messages several times a week and I have weekly meetings with two different work coaches from two different government organisations. They are on my case so much it's verging on harassment. I am psycoanalsed constantly, I've been asked very intrusive questions about my mental health and my finances.

I have had to jump through hoops to get work and the situation I find myself in is through no fault of my own.

I'm a university educated single mum. I've applied for 90 jobs in 4 months. I've been rejected from. NMW retail jobs for no reason. I can't get TA work without volunteering first, I can't get a £10.50 an hour admin job without a sage qualification I've been ignored for jobs in hospitality. I literally would turn my hand to anything.

I just got offered a catering assistant position. Thought it would please my work coach at the job centre but she said to me it wasn't good enough and what was I going to do to make the hours up.

It makes me so angry. I wish people who weren't claiming benefits understood how hard it is.

This is true.

We all know what's happened to the cost of housing in the past 20 years. With every year that passes, the percentage of the workforce who were able to buy or secure SH in a different world shrinks, and the percentage who have to reckon with the new housing costs grows. People make their decisions accordingly, sometimes it's got to be about the cold hard cash.

I really feel for you. Can I suggest that you totally ignore most of the advice on job hunting given by the work coaches as they haven’t got a clue. Keep applying for whatever nonsense they are touting. But make sure your linked in profile is good, do some volunteering for local organisations for things related to what you’d be comfortable doing to add to your cv, make sure the cv is spectacular. I have a single page cv, very brief with just basics, and personality filled covering letters, only put the max effort into the jobs you really want, but take time on them. If you’re applying for anything you’re not giving yourself enough time and mental space to put in the effort for a great application.

also work with specialist recruiters. It’s not easy at all. But I really wish I could banana peel your job coach’s car for you.

take care and good luck

Some people don't work because they can afford not to, think housewife/househusband.

Other people are better off on benefits.

Some people are bone idle.

Most people need to work full-time. With low unemployment, convincing those who are economically inactive to take a job is hard.

Except that’s one of the things pushing up inflation. It’s all very well saying we need to pay people more, but we’re at the point now where hundreds of thousands of people cannot afford to put food on the table or heat their homes. In real terms it has made people poorer, not richer.

Can't tell here whether you mean most people need to work full time because they need the money or because society needs their labour.

Not sure the former is true, given how many people have low living costs and/or actually require jobs that fit around other commitments such as education or caring. If anything, there's demand for more flexible work that doesn't fit the traditional full time model.

And if it's the latter, I'm a long term part timer, without receiving top up benefits to fund it. If anyone told me I should be working more because we need more workers generally, I'd laugh in their face.

Printing £400 billion for the ridiculous COVID response caused inflation.

The Ukraine war and consequent energy price shock has caused inflation.

Germany has had similar inflation.

The anti brexit bores need to move on with their lives.

You’d have to separate out the Ukraine war and impact on supply side inflation to get a better picture of what it’s like to have higher wages with lower inflation. I guess we’ll see when it drops this year.

You totally forgot about the millions not working because of Ill health. Some of them could work if society was more tolerant towards the needs of someone with chronic health issues, then there’s people on benefits who cannot find work that they are capable of doing, that fits with their caring responsibilities, that’s possible for them to travel to, that’s secure enough to risk applying for.

that is entirely different from being better off on benefits. No one is better off on benefits with the constant stress about being sanctioned if you get a medical issue and can’t attend a meeting, or if they deem your online applications to have not been enough and it’s only the ones in their terrible site they look at. They advertise jobs that don’t even pay enough to meet their own requirements then penalise people for taking them.

then of course there’s the people who don’t need to work as they are financially independent or retired.

none of that matters as you cannot force fit people into jobs, because jobs have requirements.

I’ve been doing two jobs for the guts of a year as the company keeps hiring and not finding someone and it’s a 50k a year job.

it’s NOT that no one wants to work, but it’s finding people with the right skills in the right place. That and the advice the job centre gives out about finding work is pretty much guaranteed to see you fall flat on your face, these people haven’t an actual clue

it’s NOT that no one wants to work

Come on? Seriously? There are millions of people that don't want to work.

Why do you think the Lottery is so popular?

The ill health issue is part of the reason why there's unmet demand for more flexible jobs, both for the people experiencing that ill health and those who care for them. It's a hugely untapped pool. Remains to be seen whether we're willing to do what's necessary to genuinely facilitate those people working.

Because you can’t just slot people in like Lego bricks. Lots of hospitality roles in locations people can’t afford to rent a house, so no good for families, lots of social care jobs that don’t pay enough to cover the travel costs, lots of manual working jobs that aren’t suitable for people with health issues, lots of jobs that only offer part time hours but demand flexibility from staff but won’t allow working parents the security of knowing shifts in advance.

when cost of living is so high, and some of these employers are demanding things that are totally unreasonable then it doesn’t work. Or you treat your staff like crap and no one wants to work for you.

I’ve been advertising a job for more than 6 months, but it’s highly specialise and it’s got a language requirement that’s non negotiable, We are paying a decent salary for it, but some of the interviews (most to be fair) are car crashes. Probably better paying myself to learn the bloody language at this rate as I’m already doing the job plus my own.

whatever advice is being given out about how to interview is vastly off the mark and you can spot the job centre cvs a mile off they are that bad. They are not genuinely helping people.

Those saying "Brexit" seem pleased that previously we could exploit (usually) poorer Eastern Europeans to do jobs on low wages while Brits couldn't get a job at all. (Especially those "lazy Brits" who'd invested in their businesses or careers and trained to be builders or plumbers or early years childcare providers)

Now that supposedly all these employers have lost their supply of cheap workers we're in a transition stage. Employers will sooner or later have to pay workers properly. Quite rightly. And the benefits system will need to be reformed as it's obvious that no society is sustainable with a huge proportion of people not contributing , ( to tax, to consumption, to increasing the collective skill base etc).

I mean fair point, I don't want to work, of course I'd rather spend my life walking my dogs, watching TV and having lunch with my friends or sitting on a beach.

Unfortunately in order to do that for 5/52 I need to work 47/52.

I don't merely exist to work, I quite enjoy it as in it's something that I have to do, so I might as well find somewhere that's remotely enjoyable, and because I want to keep my job I turn up and work hard, but if I had a choice, no I wouldn't be getting up at 5am some mornings and not getting home until 11pm other evenings or being awake all night.

But I still do work, ft, and always have done. I don't think that you can insist that people want to give their whole lives over to the benefit of other people, I mean I suppose you can but you're going to be disappointed.

Housing is a problem. Employers got round that in other countries and other times by providing homes with jobs. (Especially for young and single people). The culture and legal position has changed and it's not currently a viable prospect.

Some jobs are able to be done fully at home (a lot of office/admin/IT work for example) Some are not (like front line medical or supermarkets for example). The pp doesn’t want to move from a working from home office job to a working in the office job (extra travel time/cost etc). Seems straightforward? It would be strange if she was a surgeon or a refuse collector demanding to work from home for example, but if she works on maintaining computer systems and sits looking at a screen or on the phone all day then her location makes zero difference to the work. Some jobs are different to others.

you’re really not in the loop of how things are are you 🤦‍♀️

hate to tell you. A huge number of those vacancies, especially in health and social care and hospitality ARE in rural locations. Why should someone apply for a job in a place where they cannot afford accommodation and if the job is minimum wage and public transport isn’t good enough why on Earth would someone want to live there?

If I wanted a different job, I could have one in 20 minutes rurally. They are begging for staff, but if you’re paying minimum wage no one can afford to live on that and live here and it’s too far from where the affordable housing is to travel. Thanks airbnb

we can’t even get health professionals, no one can find a place to stay, and then people whine because they come here on holiday, stay in an air bnb and half the restaurant is closed and there’s no out of hours service if they get Ill as there’s physically not enough people living full time in the location to staff all the services.

in terms of childcare, you’re thinking Monday to Friday. My job involves travel. Anyone working as a nurse or carer, or hospitality, or even in a pub has this issue. Do you know how many childcare sites and nurseries offer over night care? Do you know how hard it is to find over night care and not end up in hot water with social work?

not everyone has family, some of us have to figure stuff out on our own, and rely on sheer luck and determination to get by. I would never criticise anyone for choosing a different path than I did.

sure I have money, but I ruined my life and health working and probably won’t live to see retirement. It’s not a competition on how much we self flagellate. And every job I got was down to having a privileged background and sheer luck. I didn’t do anything better than someone who is stuck on benefits.

having a job doesn’t make me better than anyone else and instead of huffing and puffing because there’s “all these jobs” maybe ask why the job market is so unbalanced that the available workforce isn’t where it’s needed? Ie housing

Fundamentally, people either need to be able to work remotely or they need jobs they can physically get to. If the latter, that means the combination of proximity, housing and transport has to be right.

If this doesn't happen, the mismatch between available jobs and people will continue.

"maybe ask why the job market is so unbalanced that the available workforce isn’t where it’s needed?"

Perhaps part of the problem is too many people expecting the jobs to come to them? For example, people moved to Wales due to the coal boom. The pits closed and the people remained in isolated communities.

In an ideal world, other industries would provide employment, but in the real world that hasn't happened and may never happen.

Maybe the government needs to help people abandon those physical locations (e.g. buy and demolish housing) and relocate to the places with jobs?

Or maybe better internet provision will make those communities more viable with home working?

The entire economy is in a state of transition - brexit, home working, net zero (for better or worse), the war on cars, etc. We're in the eye of the storm, but things may improve very quickly as the country adapts.