Anyone else worried about the terrible job market?

[Sorryagain]

I’ve been self employed throughout my professional life - over 30 years. I was in one profession, then broadened out and added more skills and generated a lot of work in another industry.

Both industries are fucked. Tons of redundancies, no hires. Barely any contract work. Lots of people looking. LinkedIn is a cesspit.

I am used to the hustle - but I’ve never known it so hard, nigh on impossible, to get work.

Ive been applying for permanent roles I think I could do - but even with my tons of transferrable skills, such is the market that there are enough people who perfectly fit the job description that I don’t get a look in.

Im lucky in that I have a partner who works - but I want to work. I’m seriously terrified of how bad things are - it’s never been like this for me, ever.

I just wanted to see if others are facing this?

And because I think it’s a combo of AI and cost of living/economics, I can’t see how things will improve.

@rainingsnoring me too - he knew what was coming economically -you can’t polish a turd without big cuts in various things and I don’t think he wanted to win either

My stumbling block is dyslexia. I didn't have any issues at work with this until the bully store manager took the piss out of dyslexia. He said that only children have it and adults grow out of it. BS!

The interview processes I have been through are not ND. I should not be punished for having dyslexia.

Just want a bloody job! I am getting rather frustrated and pissed off that companies are not very accommodating towards ND candidates.

It is inevitable. Gordon Brown failed in his promise that there would be no more boom and bust. The economy is cyclical and has been for at least the last hundred years. I’ve lived through seven recessions and would be astonished if there wasn’t at least one more in my lifetime.

I work in the NHS and for our recent Band 2-4 jobs we had way over 200 applicants for each one. So depressing that so many people are job seeking.
Everyone we interviewed would have been perfect for the role.

I'm pretty certain that you are correct on both points. Their campaign was comically bad. Sunak has many weaknesses and I am no fan but he is not economically illiterate.

@EasternStandard sorry but I disagree and I really would't put too much faith in what economists wheeled out by the mainstream media are saying. Economists are wrong so frequently and often politically biased too so we may as well rely on our own observations imo.

That's shocking. They aren't well paid roles either. Can I ask what area of the UK you are in roughly?

They’re right on needing to avoid a doom loop, we could but Labour need to quit the anti growth policies.

I agree there is a lot of bad stuff around, but that is also policy driven too.

The trouble is that money hasn’t gone into a void. Whether you like how it’s being spent or not (and I don’t disagree that the asylum system is a mess) that money goes to hotels, food suppliers, staff salaries, and living costs which means it gets spent, and so is going into the economy. A lot of it is already paying for jobs.

Unemployment figures are very well hidden at the moment in sickness and disabled payments. Once those are removed we’ll see how many actual jobs are available for people. Hopefully the next step will be a universal income.

A lot of it goes o/s. To eg Libya or France. The whole system will be costing a huge amount.

I work in criminal justice, when recessions hit our workload usually increases

It isn't an issue specific to Labour at all. Things visibly deteriorated under the Tory party for 14 years. In fairness to Labour, they have inherited an economy in a terrible state. The mistakes they have made are not coming out of 14 years of opposition with a coherent plan and just continuing the same old, failed policies. We need to look beyond all this 'growth' talk though because we aren't going to get significant growth, regardless of policy imo.

'Unemployment figures are very well hidden at the moment in sickness and disabled payments. Once those are removed we’ll see how many actual jobs are available for people.'
Definitely true. See also 'students'.

I'm pretty sure we are already seeing this, although a lot of these relatively minor crimes go unpunished eg shop lifting. That seems to be rife!

Most shoplifting has got nothing to do with the economic climate/CoL. Its to fund shoplifters' drugs.

NI is a tax on work which is the last thing to go for when looking for growth.

You don’t hit the private sector. The last Labour gov under Blair knew that. This Labour gov came in swinging and the figures show the impact already.

That's a bit simplistic @Auburngal and untrue. There are many factors behind the rise in shoplifting and economic hardship is one of them.

I agree that the changes to employer's NI are really foolish. It just serves to make all the underlying problems even worse. Hit SMEs hard and cosy up to Larry Fink. Some Labour government!

If i couldn’t feed my family i wouldn’t hesitate and M&S would be top of the list, might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb

@rainingsnoring I don’t agree with employers NI either - it is though in all honesty the only thing I’ve disagreed with - apart from if course refusal to join something like the EEA- ridiculous-we could put 3% on the economy within about 8 months by doing so it’s estimated- would put about 15% on my business.

Shoplifters that steal for drug money clear the whole shelf of meat joints, razor blades, dishwasher tablets, those plug in air freshener refills etc

If you can’t afford food, then you steal a normal shop of goods - bread, milk, few tins, a couple of packets. Not all of the same item, as it’s a case of scoop and leg it’s

Working at a supermarket I saw much of the former. Those items in the former such as the dishwasher tablets I processed them when management or security discovered what’s been taken or attempted, so head office knows what is being taken etc

It must be jolly tough for businesses trading with Europe. I'm not sure how much benefit we would see from rejoining the EU now.
Labour have had (still have) an opportunity to try doing things in a different way, over hauling the tax system, for example, but they seem to be doing the same old things as far as I can see. It is genuinely difficult though because they either need to increase taxes (as they have done) or reduce spending a lot (they have just announced small cuts, but they won't cut it!). Both those things are extremely unpopular politically. If they were to borrow ££££, the markets may well react extremely badly so they don't really have that option.

But on the other hand, it's reducing the number of bed nights available for others who want to stay in hotels, which drives up price via basic economics of supply and demand. You really can't ring fence an entire large hotel for asylum seekers without it increasing demand in nearby similar hotels. I.e. if a 200 bedroom Holiday Inn is closed for "normal" hotel users, then the 200 bedroom Travelodge nearby by WILL see an increase in demand and therefore raise their prices.

Likewise it increases demand for holiday letting accommodation as people will see high demand and low supply in certain areas and decide it's a good idea to buy a property (or convert a residential let) to be a short term holiday let instead, thus removing homes from the local markets and worsening the domestic home availability, and again driving up costs.

Fair enough where old run down hotels are used as a kind of "last chance saloon" before they need complete refurbishment or conversion, but when entire relatively modern hotels, like Travelodges or Holiday Inns are being taken over, then it has to have a local impact. If there hadn't been demand, those hotels would never have been built in the first place!

There is a bigger picture in play.

@rainingsnoring I think we would see a big benefit commercially and very quickly ( not just me of course) so many business I know that had large amounts of direct to consumer mail order within Europe have massively struggled- and it’s not just Europe- the EU has little publicised but ‘in place’ agreements on goods under a certain value too worldwide- including USA- so those went too

Yes it’s complicated - and as I said I’m not actually trying to say the asylum system is working well. But in a free market, if demand goes up, that doesn’t have to just increase prices - you would also expect to increase supply, where that’s possible. Not just air b&bs but more hotels, more house building (I know that’s complicated too but where I live it’s massively booming - unfortunately too freely as it’s mostly luxury flats and private student blocks so not actually helping averagely paid workers). People will respond to demand by providing services and goods to take advantage of the money to be gained - whether that’s the govt’s 13 billion or other people’s increased demand.

it’s not that the whole £13bn is necessarily going to good use or all to the UK. I was just pointing out that if money is being spent on something like hotels, food and admin, then that does at least partially equal paying people’s wages rather than it just vanishing somewhere. It’s like when people complain about the rich spending loads of money on handbags or eating out or taxis or whatever - inequality aside which is another issue, that’s actually good for the economy not just wasted money.

I’m not actually pro-totally free market economics and think a lot of things should be more regulated and nationalised, but my point is you can’t take all the money being spent on things you don’t approve of and assume that means that same amount could be available for job creation. If some or all of the money is being spent here, it is creating jobs so diverting it to be used to create new jobs would also result in jobs being lost