Labour have ruined the job market

[Needajobforspouse]

My spouse was made redundant in November, has done some bid work since then (e.g zero contract parcel delivery) but not enough to make up his old salary. He has job alerts and this week there was ZERO jobs advertised that meet his qualifications.

Nobody is hiring.

I work for an SME, and I am also at risk and in bad health. Not enough for PIP etc but enough to make me unreliable (recently diagnosed as immunocompromised).

Not even the local supermarket is hiring, and they won’t touch my DH anyway as he is massively over qualified (I know a supermarket manager and they don’t take on over qualified people as they are “hard to manage” and don’t stay long term.).

yesterday our car broke and we used the last of our savings for a new one, my roof is leaking. My bay window is leaking and I just feel like giving up.

just dreading this year of shitty government policies that pick on the middle income earners and penalise us, is this life? Because if so I hate it.

also where are all the jobs?! Literally zero here in northern England.

Labour have certainly killed the market for many entry level roles as the increases in minimum wage/NI mean that someone like an apprentice / entry level will cost a business the same as someone with 5 years’ experience. So of course they will choose the person with 5 years’ experience.

Well no because apprentice levy. Minimum wage is also still much lower for under 21s.

They've pretty much wrecked everything.

No - the only trend in vacancies is a longer term one. So not due to Labour. https://www.ons.gov.uk/chartimage?uri=/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/jobsandvacanciesintheuk/january2025/3d6feced

I'm astounded at how blinkered people are about politics. Recruitment has literally fallen off a cliff since Labour came to power. There are many, many international developments that impact our economy but this is not one of them. I say this as a Labour voter - the Recruitment market dropped off almost over night after the election. This is not '14 years of Torys' or global issues, this is absolutely on Labour and they need to sort it very, very quickly!

Marketing is going to be hit hard by AI, tbh, more than by slight changes to government policy. It will be a fairly permanent change as well - he should look at marketing for places like universities or Historic England, as they'll move him sideways rather than out if marketing shrinks to just one intern saying "Gemini... Make me a slogan..."

Ah I see you have only joined Mumsnet recently and like to claim anyone showing concern in such matters is a racist and bigot.
Love to know your agenda.

Will he not consider a call centre job?

My ex-employer is always hiring on a WFH full time basis.

Call centre jobs are gruelling but they're in abundance and IME they will hire anybody (which has both good and bad points). I'm in NE England.

Of course.

https://careers.breedongroup.com/early-careers

There are 10 more roles going on the website on Wednesday. They are for plant/quarry operatives around England. If you have a look at Breedons FB page or Instagram, there’s videos of apprentices taking about the different jobs they do.

Hope it’s useful.

I agree whilst it isn’t the only reason, on the slippery slope down this has accelerated things rather sharply.

Both Aldi and Lidl are great employers plus he would get first dibs on the middle aisle! Has he a profile on LinkedIn? I get offered jobs constantly on there

Seems a bit petty to blame labour when you and your partner could've just worked harder when we were under the amazing and prosperous Tory government...

@Lucyccfc68 brilliant, thanks!

All these jobs in the north are agency and agency aren't reliable!

Labour inherited a shit hole

This - I don't think people understand enough how businesses work

My DH’s company needs to find an extra million pounds to cover their total NI increase. They’ve already started to cut jobs in preparation.

I work a zero hours contract and I have pretty much been told once I hit £5000 earnings with them from April they aren’t going to be able to offer me anything till next year because they can’t afford the extra 5% on my salary, or anyone else’s and as they have a lot of students as the university is near by coming in from October they will fill the work with them till next April or when the students have earned £5000

Speaking to someone who works at the benefits office even she said that there isn’t any work for them to offer people

Normally there are the basic jobs for shop work, hospitality, care homes and warehouse work but even they aren’t hiring and if anything they are getting rid of people as businesses to save the 5% NI and all the other taxes Labour has risen and is expecting them to pay they have to let people go to balance the books

What I don’t understand is how RR and Labour thought that costing a business more to employ someone was somehow going to grow the economy

Surely they must have realised that businesses weren’t going to hand over more money in taxes just to keep Janice from accounts or James from legal working for them. They would just get rid of all the Janices and James they could, divide up their work and carry on

So all the Janice’s and James’s end up claiming benefits costing the government £1500 per month instead of the extra £150 income they thought they would be getting

Utterly ridiculous

Yabu. You can't. Blame the government for everything. Certain sectors will contract , others will expand. The economy is generally stable and areas which are needed will do well. Others won't. People make their choices and need to live with them.

ive been using it to improve my cv vs the role i want to apply for, i understand the need for details but some companys expect war and peace type application just to then go, computer says no, where as other companies on eg indeed, its click to apply upload cv and then its completed,

that said i copy the role description and then get ai to rewrite my experience to see if it matches then highlight the most important skills to match the description, but i do have to tone down the words used as it tends to oversell my skills with fancy words

This 👆

My last contact finished in 2022, and because of Brexshit, there's been nothing since, as so many jobs were moved abroad. I've had to completely retrain and start my own business to create an income. It's a struggle.

The cafe near me is upstairs. No retail space there. Still closed. Companies are reducing jobs across the board.

The current government has only been in power for a few months, the economy was in a state before that, we can't blame them for everything.

Labour might have only been in power 8 months but that makes it all the more dire. With a Budget that didn’t seem to understand the consequences of raising taxes from businesses was going to negatively affect a lot of the working population especially in certain sectors and all the other damage they have caused

If this is what they have achieved in 8 months just imagine the state of the country in 48 months

But this wasn't Labour really- the Conservatives did something very sneaky this year when it became obvious that they weren't going to be in power much longer- they reduced the NI rate for employees from 12% to 10% in January 2024, and then to 8% in April 2024. It wasn't supported by these vital funds coming from elsewhere. They knew it would be popular (less tax!) and it would screw over the incoming party when they had to put it back to the level that it actually needs to be at to try and balance the books.

If anything I'd say it's played out exactly as the Conservatives were planning, and I'd lay the blame for any impacts to the job market at their door.

On the other hand we haven't personally found it any different job market wise. My husband had a long period of unsuccessfully looking for work (8 months) and secured a role just before Christmas. His Company have also just released an additional new-to-the-business role in his team this week, so are still growing their workforce.

But what you're saying doesn't seem to match the data, though?

https://www.statista.com/statistics/283771/monthly-job-vacancies-in-the-united-kingdom-uk/#:~:text=In%20the%20three%20months%20to,vacancies%20steadily%20falling%20since%20then.