To think we need to start talking about the lack of jobs?

[Newmeagain]

This is prompted by quite a few threads I have read recently, from parents of young people looking for jobs or posters themselves struggling with finding a job.

I feel like a lot of responses are completely out of touch and people are not aware how hard it is right now. There are no “supermarket jobs” etc that you can just pick up.

I think this is having a particularly significant impact on school leavers and graduates looking for their first full time job, students wanting part time work and also anyone over 50 who suddenly finds themselves unemployed.

This sounds racist, ignorant and untrue. Are you talking about supermarkets? I haven't seen any more workers in the supermarkets which I use, who may or may not be Indian or of Indian heritage than in years gone by.

Bit rude and mean!

That's quite a generalisation there.

Of course not everyone is able to drive a lorry. Or join the military. Most people will be capable of it though and the list I gave wasn't exhaustive.

It is a tough market at the moment, there is no doubt about that. But if people are only applying for things in a narrow job zone or in a narrow geographical area then you are self-limiting.

I have moved hundreds of miles - twice - and moved into a sector I never really wanted to move into for work. If I'd stayed at home and only applied for jobs in my preferred sector I know for a fact I would be one of those struggling right now. At one point I was balancing four part time jobs, volunteering, and running my own little online shop. I know all about trying very hard to make things work, but sometimes you have to concede you need to make sacrifices.

I arrived to the jobs marked as a fresh-faced graduate in 2012. I'm sure we all remember what a wonderful time that was for the economy and for work. I've been there, I've been the one filling out numerous applications only to never hear anything back.

My point is if people really are "desperate" for a job, there are jobs to be found but you may have to make some adjustments.

Same with my employer, hundreds of entry level admin roles outsourced to India in the last couple of years. This has not only meant mass redundancies but also removed the traditional “recent graduate” roles from the hierarchy. Not sure how young adults leaving university are supposed to get the experience needed for higher level roles. It’s all very short sighted IMO

No evidence on the 90% - just my lived experience. It might just be that 90% of people write shit CVs and can't be arsed with a covering letter as to why they want the role. I've had several people tell in an interview that it doesn't really matter how it goes since they are only looking to tick off a box so could we keep it short. I think "Easy apply" on Linkedin and main job sites has a lot of answer for in terms of people being able to churn volume of applications with no real effort.

There are so many reasons.
Having worked with hundreds of yp this year alone, a lot of them tell me they wouldn’t be caught dead doing a 9-5 job and want to be paid 6figures for content creation. Not an exaggeration, probably 80% of the yp I work with have said this. The other 20% want to find work like in supermarkets/pubs etc but struggle socially/don’t know where to start/no opportunities.

YP have been impacted by social media, poor mental health, harmful ideologies online, lack of opportunities, AI, migration (both ways, lots of needed professions leave the UK - and these are the people we would need to support next generations in their needed industries).

And how many of us here contribute to the fall in high street physical jobs?

Who shops online? Books flights online? Does online banking? Makes coffee at home? Sells via Vinted instead of donating to charity shops? Does an online supermarket shop? Sends WhatsApp greetings instead of cards? Downloads musicfilms, books even? Works from home?

We all do, We are all part of the decline in starter, part time, decent life long jobs.

How can a government any government create jobs when the population chooses not to support them?

We have teens they need to think about things differently for their life career. And we need as their parents to expect to provide and support in different ways. It’s a totally different world, the world changes it doesn’t stop they need to change with it.

I absolutely agree with this. I can cite my daughter as an example - good academic qualifications from school but didn't want to go to university. Before having her children, she progressed really well in the insurance industry, culminating in being a team manager for a large American owned firm. Excellent, well above average remuneration package including private health insurance. But she was working all hours in a hugely demanding role, notwithstanding that she is extremely capable.

She realised that going back into that world with two young children would never be manageable or desirable. The job market where she lives is very tight at the moment, not much about, and she was beginning to despair of getting anything suitable which could work around the children, so she could be a 'present' parent. She is now doing a night shift at a very large supermarket and loving it - only been there a very short time and her potential and can-do attitude has already been identified and she is being trained up in a career progression. Not everyone wants to get up at 3 a.m. in the morning, but for her it is her contribution to the family finances, gives her self-worth and also works around the children so she can be with them during the holidays. Also means that hopefully as the children get older her job development will continue.

She probably wouldn't have got an interview for this job if she had a cv with a degree qualification on it. Sad but true in my opinion.

Minimum wage limits the number of jobs that will be available. In a manufacturing company I worked with once it had factories around the world. We identified that some countries had much higher wastage than others and on investigation we found the every so often the machines got blocked which messed up the product. In the Chinese and Indian factories they employed someone who was very low paid but those job was to hand sort the product back into a useable form. In the UK and Germany when exactly the same thing happened you weren't allowed to employ someone at the cost that was economical so it was cheaper just to throw the product away. Many will say that if a job isn't worth minimum wage it isn't worth doing which is what these factories concluded.

I don't think a survey of one is very representative

No most people couldn’t go in the military or drive a lorry. People are adjusting and still not finding work. Just dismissing a widely reported problem with simply join the military and adjust is just flippant and not that helpful.

@frozendaisy wfh doesn’t mean you don’t contribute to the local economy. I go out to local cafes and shops on my lunch break.

You could say ordering an online supermarket shop actually helps create more jobs than going to get it yourself. There’s the person who picks it from the shelves and the person who drives it to you.

I do order stuff online but like a lot of us I’m working full time and have young kids who are not easy to go shopping with. On the occasions I have tried taking my autistic son shopping, he has run off a couple of times and I once lost him for twenty minutes. It’s unbelievably stressful. There are all sorts of reasons people avoid shopping in person.

Exactly. A few people saying “I got a job” or “my son got a job” doesn’t mean the market isn’t terrible. It just shows that some people are successful. In many industries and regions there are hundreds of applicants per role, hiring has slowed, and even highly qualified candidates are struggling. Individual success stories don’t disprove the wider reality.

Just Indians working in all our local shops. Most of them supervising or managing. We have a post office connected to our local convenience store. The supervisor of the store is now employed by the post office and she was training another Indian.

Meanwhile my DD18 has been trying for two years to get part time work. Make it make sense.

Reported.

I don't really know. Maybe a work ethic thing. Or a cultural thing - Indian generally parents are renowned for giving their kids an easy time.

Most people are healthy and intelligent enough to join the military (fitness isn't as high a bar as you'd think) and to drive an HGV, yes. Not everyone will be able to do it, but for the majority of the population there will not be insurmountable issues.

I also didn't say "simply join the military and adjust" did I? You're flippantly reducing quite a long considered post to a false sound bite.

If you want to wring your hands and wail that there's nothing to be done then that is, of course, your prerogative. It is not, however, an approach which I would agree is helpful or constructive.

I have been the young person struggling for jobs and it was not so long ago as to be ancient history. I speak from experience.

I think this is important to highlight too.

I’ve struggled with work, to the point where the people I tend to interview with tell me it’s nothing I have done, someone else just has better experience. And I apply by sending a personal note to the recruiter/company, which tends to get me to the interview stage.

But the competition is insane. And I also think that so much is outsourced to younger “influencer” types that have managed to create a great profile and charge less (I guess good for them?) or outsourced abroad to services that offer much cheaper services for faster work.

I think work is all about speed now and we are competing against machines and cheap labour and some of that comes in the form of low entry to market where you can have 1 year experience, inflate your online presence and win over work that someone with 10 years experience deserves.

My child is at university in a large city and is struggling to find part time work. It’s not that they are fussy or have a poor work ethic because they have a job back here at home in the holidays.
They’ve had this job for four years since they were at school and it’s hard work. They’ve been known to travel back from uni which is an 8 hour round trip to work over weekends in term time.

Not wringing my hands but look for solutions. None of my children could join the military or drive a lorry.

My DD is 16 and works 8h a week in a pharmacy. She applied for the role on Indeed. Well, she applied for a role with the company on Indeed but the role disappeared, but they called her back with a more local and suitable position. It's actually wasted on her as she has no interest in pharmacology or the field post-school, but the hours and location are excellent.

She was also offered a job at a trampoline centre and in IKEA, all applied for through Indeed or the company's own recruitment page of their website.

Outsourcing to India is going through a resurgence in my industry. 50% of the European roles at my company are being made redundant with the workload being transferred to India. All skilled jobs.

There are almost a million Indian- born individuals employed in the UK. The largest overseas working group in the UK.

So of course it's not 'nonsense' that people are seeing a lot of Indian workers.

You're wasting your time. I also reported it yesterday but, like sexism, homophobia, transphobia and general bigotry, racism is perfectly acceptable on Mumsnet.