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 ?

There are quite a few vacancies where I live, but most are zero hours contracts (so no guarantee of work week to week) or require full flexibility which obviously isn't possible for many people. All for at or only slightly above MW.

It is Brexit. Even if the companies you are talking about didn't previously use EU workers, places that did - NHS, supermarkets etc have lost workers and as those jobs tend to offer more benefits (stable hours, better rotas, either fixed or flexible, sick pay etc) than small companies/ service industry then people moved in to those roles.

I think many employers were spoiled for choice pre-Brexit. There was a steady stream of job

Oops, pressed send too soon. Anyway...

I think many employers were spoilt for choice pre-Brexit. There was a steady stream of cheap easy labour. People willing to work hard and long hours for pennies. Now most have left and jobseekers rightfully think they deserve a decent wage, but a lot of employers haven't cottoned on yet.

It sounded entitled to me .. in that many people have to be at work

If it was that or rely on the taxpayer then yes it would be entitled but she is currently in work and has a choice so it's not entitled, it's a preference.
Clearly someone training to be a nurse or similar knows that they will need to carry out their work on site, but other roles make just as much sense to do from home. Again which career to persue is a choice.

Well, the ones I know have gone in to admin roles where they do a mix of WFH and in the office, more sociable hours and more flexibility. Do you assume all shop workers have no choice? Are unqualified or thick? Because that's what your comments sound like.

I recently left the NHS because I wanted to work part time and have more flexibility to WFH than my old job offered. I found a company that would accept those things. It wasn't hard.

This is a very valid point

To one of the many jobs you talk about in the post you started?!

I'm 55 i have my NHS pension I would be quite happy to work 10-15 hours a week I would be happy with zero hour contract ( but that legally works both ways) I can be flexible but not fully flexible as I have other commitments. I do not need to work to survive so I wont put up with mistreatment I can just walk, I'm not prepared to work Sundays at all or every single Saturday or after 6pm ( and to be honest preferably 4pm) I have a degree of chronic fatique which gets worse as the day progresses so working even a little late would damage my health I have work that fits this just now

But for some people a short working week job is to fit around their partners work hours to minimise childcare costs and for most there is no childcare available before 7.30am or after 6pm or at weekends so if you're partner is say a nurse or police officer working nights that start at 9pm you can't be available after 8pm

Yeah this sums up my experience when I was job hunting 🙄🤣

I am always a bit dubious when employers complain they can't find or retain staff.

This is usually because:

• the pay is not enough to live on
• they are not willing to take on people who might not have exactly the experience to match their requirements. They are shooting themselves in the foot by not being willing to train people who might have the right attitude and could easily learn to do the job
• lack flexibility: many employers still insist on long hours and are resistant to home/flexible working
• work conditions/environment are poor

I think if employers actually made an effort to look at alternative work patterns (part-time, job shares, home working) they would attract a lot of people who currently feel excluded because of rigid work practices.

Also lack of childcare provision.

I've found that minimum wage has risen quicker than the few rungs above it have. So when I took my job it was 1.7 × minimum wage but now it is 1.2 × minimum wage (despite having had some payrises).
I dont even think minimum wage is enough but everything needs to shift up or more and more jobs will be swallowed into minimum wage.

@Manyanaish you're mad?! People can choose to do whichever job they want that suits their needs? I have never at any point written a pro and cons list for a job and included the caveat of "can paramedics also ask for this?".

What nonsense.

I agree with PP, I've just accepted a new job and I would have flatly turned it down if it had meant I had to be in the office 5 days a week, it's just not viable for my family needs and what I'm willing to sacrifice for the salary that is being offered. The new job is remote and flexible and involves flexi time so I can get the odd morning or afternoon off if needs be. But mainly I'm not travelling 1.5hrs each way to sit in an office all day.

Workers are getting poorer.
Wages rises are not keeping up with price rises.
Worker shortages = tax losses = worse public services.

Brexit was a big fat con.

''@talkingdeadscot · Today 17:44

Employers want;

full flexibility with no guaranteed hours
fully trained and ready to go whatever the position
buy your own uniform
pay for any needed certificates yourself
degrees even for the basic jobs
jumping through hoops for interviews
recent references
full job history (no chance if you've had to have time out)
full health
preferably under 25 in order to pay lower wages

All for near enough minimum wage. I know I'm exaggerating a bit but it does feel like this a lot of the time. What can employers do to attract staff instead of wingeing they can't get anyone?''

Exactly this.

When they say they can't get the staff it usually means:

''we can't get highly educated young people with no family responsibilities, who are in perfect health and who will do a job with impossible deadlines and workloads, be on call 24/7 and be happy to be paid peanuts so that we can maximise our profits''

This is so true 🤣

And that are very many examples of exactly that happening on this thread.

The government full of course of enthusiastic Brexiteers is leading the way with this with how they are treating public sector workers.

Are you very rural? So many hospitality jobs everywhere!

While I agree with this, I work in hospitality and used to be in social care, so I'm no stranger to employers expecting full flexibility for the lowest they can legally get away with, expecting their staff to subsidise their business costs, treating them badly and now wringing their hands protesting they've no idea why they can't get staff 🙄.
But, are people willing, and more importantly, able to pay more for services in order that businesses can actually pay more?
Would people be willing to pay more for say a meal out, so the venue can pay more to keep/attract staff and therefore be open to use in the first place?
Or more taxes so that health and social care staff get better wages and benefits and keep and attract more staff? (This one is slightly different for me because it's publicly funded and there's no way that businesses should be syphoning out a large profit in the middle, charging the SU a fortune and paying the care givers a pittance,it should be regulated because I feel that would go someway to solving the problem)

Another very unpopular opinion about why hospitality is struggling is because of customer behaviour, people are massively overreacting to the smallest situations and can be absolutely vile and people quite rightly don't want to spend 8 hours on the recieving end of that, for minimum wage.

We don't value the people doing these jobs as a society, there's an attitude that people who are doing these jobs aren't aspirational enough, lazy, don't try hard enough, they're not careers, they're a stop gap to something 'better' - yet when the service reflects that attitude, done by people who aren't invested - people are complaining service isn't good enough.

Brexit of course is another reason, but as a pp said, I do think migrant workers kept wages lower than they should be because there was always someone to fill a position and continue to pay and treat badly - we've lost that and this is the result.

Many jobs are badly paid

There are a lot of barriers with transport to work being inadequate and childcare issues. There are also a lot of people saying they can't work as they are too anxious. There are a lot of jobs in certain sectors but a lot of people people will stay on benefits rather than work in care or hospitality. There is also quite a reluctance to improve job skills such as computer knowledge, maths, English etc despite courses being free.

This is a job I would do but searched and searched and would have had to travel more than an hour to get to the nearest one. I think they used to get subsidies for taking foreign workers????? Not sure. If there's such a need, many hands

This ^.

Up your wages, you'll get the staff.

UK economy used to be supported by cheap labour living in low cost conditions.

Now that cheap labour has gone because it's no longer worth living 10 to a house to get paid peanuts that will not even cover your food costs.

Result :

The middle class are going to have to pay more for their coffees, and people who had sod all chance of owning their own houses are now going to earn more money, and maybe, just maybe get a chance of that at some point in the future.

Remind me again. All the lower paid people who voted for Brexit were idiots. Right ?

Yes. Employers (and the government) for some reason seem to think that people are happy to work full time while not being able to afford a home or a decent standard of living. The result is that people simply won't work. They will stay on benefits, which also drags down the higher earners who have to foot the bill.

As I said before, they may have got away with it with the previous generation who bought homes cheaply and had lower outgoings, but times have changed.

Yo u think she should take a job regardless of whether the conditions are suitable for her cos supermarket workers and nurses might get jealous they can't work from home?