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 ?

That literally is £30k - actually slightly more, depending on how much leave you take

We are struggling
Min wage but decent bonus guaranteed
Don't have to do weekends
Can work school hours only if you wanted or anything between 7-7
But it's a contact centre (no cold calls/hard selling)
Full training and some WFH

As an add on from my previous post there are also other reasons

A lot of over55s decided to draw lump sum down off pensions and give up work or drastically cut back

There are lots and lots of unwell people out there- covid has caused bloody havoc with some peoples vascular and nervous systems ( me for one) totally out the blue. Yes it could be the vaccine too- I guess we will never know. Outcome is though most people with these issues want something not that demanding based from home to cut commute stress out- this doesn't help retail, care, hospitality , medical etc

As someone else said lockdown made some people quite savvy and realised they wouldn't be that much worse off doing a bit of something with benefit top ups rather than anything low or modestly paid but full on - especially if they have several children and rent. I'm not sure how you get round that to be honest. - because much as I've got a good work ethic ,if you aren't really gaining much financially I can see why some get into that mindset

Not surprising there are lots of vacancies at the moment, given current circumstances.

What IS surprising is that despite there being lots of vacancies and businesses apparently being desperate for staff, that wages are still really low. Case in point in the OP - a business saying it’s desperate for staff, while only offering £16ph. It’s not enough to live on, given high prices for housing, energy, food, transport etc.

If the laws of supply and demand operate in the simplistic way the Tory party believes they do, wages should be way higher. Instead, we’ve got a kind of Mexican stand off with workers holding out for more and employers not budging.

Lots of places have advertisments such as 16 (or more or less) hours per week - full flexibility required to cover sickness/holidays.

Many people who don't work full time hours generally require that for a reason for caring or childcare etc. Therefore can't suddenly work an extra 16 hours a week which many places seem to require these days. There doesn't seem to be as many fixed hours part time jobs.

Jobs don't pay enough. Nobody from abroad wants to come anymore and locals won't do it.

If they pay them more then the price of the product/service goes up.

Nobody's willing to pay more for these things and will be outraged because other wages are stagnant and have been for a long time.

To answer your question: because the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer and the first things to go when everything big becomes more expensive is the jobs that aren't compatible with shelter, food and warmth all at once.

Austerities nasty little effect that.

They can't come, since Brexit.

Only Europeans could come without paying a fortune for a visa.

Brexit was such a bloody con.

It seems to me that Brexit is resulting in a more Scandinavian society.

Labour shortages are causing wages to rise. That will push up the price of goods and services to pay those wages and wage inequality will fall.

For example, cleaners won't be paid minimum wages anymore, because they won't be able to find anybody that will do the job for minimum wage.

I expect Britain will become a nation of the £10 pint and cleaners earning £40k.

With regards to benefits, they're clearly too generous in terms of allowing perfectly healthy people to fake invisible illnesses (long covid, depression, etc) and opt for a comfortable life of idleness. How we address the shirkers, without impacting the genuinely ill, really is the question.

500k came in 2021
700k+ came in 2022

Get over your Brexit derangement.

This 👆

One thing that you haven't mentioned is all the migrants who come here to live in hotels at our expense rather than going out and getting jobs. If they worked we wouldn't have to pay them so much in benefits and there wouldn't be so many job vacancies.

I guess the issue there would be encouraging economic migrants to claim asylum in order to gain the right to work legally. It would potentially be a major pull factor for more people arriving.

We are a million miles from a Scandinavian model.

As for benefits - you're living in a fantasy land. The reality of life on benefits for many is poverty Poverty rates by benefit type | JRF

Asylum seekers are not allowed to work - the government's choice. The government only has to house them for so long because they have stopped hearing their cases.

No one comes here for a shit room in a shit hotel with £9.10 cash per week to spend.

It isnt necessarily low wages that were the total issue, it's high costs relative to average incomes- with no controls in place , particularly private rents due to lack of social housing, childcare, council tax , utilities , high mortgages in many parts of the country due to ridiculously inflated house prices. People getting into debt just to get by. People needing 2 cars in many non city areas due to poor public transport these days.

Absolutely correct. And the bulk of that is due to government policy.

Surely they could work while they wait for the next flight to Rwanda or wherever they want to go to?

I can't tell if you are genuinely ignorant or trying to be funny - was that a joke?

In case it is your lack of understanding - obviously if it is illegal to work, and they have no paperwork to enable them to pass a right to work check, they will not be able to work.

They come here to take our jobs and scrounge off benefits, I read it in the newspaper.

We do have higher numbers now so maybe it’s more the Covid resigning that happened

It's not ridiculous

I won't do more than 3 office days out of 5 tops and most good employers in my field won't ask for more as they know only the most desperate candidates will apply

This is the trouble with them, destroyed their paperwork so they could live in hotels at our expense and not work.

@wildfirewonder

I used to work with a Nigerian guy who said loads of people he knew lived on benefits (free house, free money, free good quality education for the kids, free healthcare) and ran business, via telephone/internet, back in Nigeria. They employed cousins, etc, as runners to get things done. He seemed to think it was a great setup for those people (from their perspective) and there was zero chance of them ever getting UK jobs because they knew they would never be made homeless/lose their benefits because they had kids.

If they're spending their profits using a Nigerian Visa card, get can be 'officially poor', but actually quite comfortable.

Now, I'm not claiming that's a huge number of people, but it's an example of just one of the many, many ways people take advantage of the system.

What I'm trying to say is that there's a big difference between the reality of people taking the piss and the pro benefits propaganda that claims nobody is taking the piss - and everybody on benefits is living a tragic life of misery.

Interesting comments.

I am currently looking for a new job after a decade in the same one, with exemplary appraisals and no sickness. Why? I’m sick of being treated like crap. Employees who have a proven track record are not being respected, are being completely dumped upon, and are expected to do the most work for the least flexibility. WFH was proven with no drop in service and yet now frowned upon, while at the same time expecting availability almost 24/7 with anything in your personal non-contracted hours being seen as a ‘stressor’ because it stops you agreeing to work whenever they want you to, contract be damned.

Add this to crap pay, insulting ‘offers’ designed to manipulate staff but give no real benefit, and I’m no longer interested.

They refuse to wise up so they can find some other mug. Thankfully there are some employers who have enough sense to treat their employees like people.

Are you a brexit voter not yet ready to admit it was a shit idea??

When you say
500k came in 2021
700k+ came in 2022
What groups of people, what types of visa?

Only 40k seasonal worker visas in 2022 - this is one important type of worker we lost due to Brexit.

1.2 million new people (net) into the country in the past two years, hardly correlates with the earlier claim that 'they [ foreign workers ] can't come since brexit'.