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.

Don't quote me on it because the last time I was there I was 5. But, my friends brother lives in Canada, married to a Canadian girl, they're all talking about it over there because the fast food places are mainly employing Indian people. They're saying that once one gets to management level, and starts doing the hiring and firing then it's not what you know, its who you know. And a lot of young Canadian school leavers who would normally pick up these jobs when they leave school now can't get them. They were talking about it as if it's an epidemic over there, I don't know how true it is, and don't know if the same is happening in the UK.

Whereas H’s office has hybrid, where workers can decide their own days, they have reduced their floor space in the block, there are no admin assistants, a receptionist for the building no longer one for their company, meetings are held online, no meeting rooms to set up.

Their reduced floor space means another company is on one of their old floors, times that by just 4 and that’s one other building not needed more companies can fit into less office space. The car park is so empty nowadays at any time you can do car doughnuts in it. H trains his juniors online, they don’t observe him at work so to speak, there is no casual lunchtime coffee or conversations at desks that can end up on enlightening tangents.

It these small choices and nudges multiplied over and over again that make the working world a much more different place than it used to be.

Yes human interactions are being lost, casual observations and youngsters growing in confidence meeting random seniors, having snatched opportunities to show willing or manners or social skills not seen online are being lost.

Supermarket pickers are not serving customers, they don’t need to ring the buzzer to ask someone to exchange a box of eggs, and that might suit some workers, but there are more younger workers who are at a disadvantage from the removal of in life human contact. I have work friendships that have endured 20 years past leaving because we were all in together getting to know each other, being there for the higs and lows and random lunches together.

Having that team spirit and some enjoyment with colleagues rather than people grumpy because “they can do this job at home now” so resent being in the office is detrimental to the younger workers. Who in turn might think work is not to be enjoyed, so they are less motivated.

And convenience online has shut banks, they used to be steady respected white collar high street jobs, it has shut some offices, it has shut bookshops and clothes shops and greengrocers etc

And we, as most are, are selfish, we want to work from home, to remove the commute, to get shopping delivered, to bank online, to work through lunch hours to do the school run, to put laundry on so it’s not there at the weekend. We all do. Acknowledging that this makes it harder for our children when they enter the world is accepting the consequences of our collective choices. And the position that we as parents try to subconsciously fill those gaps that used to happen in workplaces.

Where I work they have been transferring roles that were previously done in the UK or US to our India office. No reason apart from it’s cheaper. Now for entry-level roles they are often only recruiting in India, again because it’s cheaper.
I’m quite worried about the future as I’m a lone parent (widow) nearing 50 and have no idea what I’d do if my role is also made redundant or moved. The job market has changed significantly since I was last looking.

schools have shortage of staff. Don’t need teaching qualification for teaching assistant and office based jobs,

It really is regional. Where we live young people with jobs is a rarity. A new independent cafe opened to much fanfare… advertised for weekend staff and added “not suitable for those in education as flexibility may be required”

Had same said by Canadians. And some Indians (not in UK). Interestingly the moan lf the latter was that it's not just being Indian but the "correct" Indian as per the hiring manager. So they get fucked too!

I see.

Skills shortages? Whenever I go to the hospital, about 50% of the doctors and nurses seem to be foreigners. I seem to recall we have a shortage of abbatoir workers and butchers.

Universities have loads of foreign
students to keep them afloat (they pay much more than home students in fees).

Then there are jobs which British people seem to not want to do - seasonal crop picking and care home work and hospitality. I think it is probably unrealistic to get British people to do the crop picking because most of us can only survive if we work all year round.

Hilarious. Who’s going to ban them? You?

This is the way it is and if you think it’s bad now wait five years and you’ll see no humans at all working in supermarkets and the like. The supermarket owners are still making healthy profits and will continue to do so. Why should they give a shit about the ‘human touch’ and other people’s money problems?

The government of the day has to be friendly to investors by giving them incentives. Currently, there is really no incentive for anyone to set up a company in this country, not only are the taxes and business expenses over the roof, but you also have no access to the wider European market. Makes more sense to incorporate in Ireland and hire cheap customer care agents from Asia. It's horrible how many companies are leaving the UK or simply hiring from abroad.
Things will only improve if the government is willing to make them better. Lower taxes, encourage businesses and factories to open again, encourage billionaires to come back and spend money here. More spending = more govt revenue.

I live near a well-know pasty factory in Cornwall, all the staff there are East European, yet Cornwall is a disadvantaged area with plenty of available local staff.

The construction industry is short of about 400,000 workers. It isn’t that there are no jobs, it’s that people don’t want the jobs that are available.

This is so true, in my local market town Sainsbury, M&S and Lidl have reduced their manned tills to a couple and have replaced them with self service. Even more shocking was a huge Tesco Extra store in Devon a couple of weeks ago, they have a massive block of self service, but when I went to one of the normal tills it turns out these were self serve card only as well, a dozen tills with one supervisor running around having to do the age authentication for alcohol. A recent trip to IKEA was the same, self service.

I think it must be regional. My dd and her friends have all found jobs pretty easily.

I assume you drive/have plentiful public transport/Ubers where you live?

I have no skin in the game as DD managed to find work very easily, but I do think that those who live where there are more opportunities/better transport options really don't understand that in some areas it really is very difficult.

There is an oversupply of graduates in the university city in the allied healthcare role that DD is currently training for, but that isn't the case elsewhere in the UK, and she is prepared to go where the opportunities are once she is qualified.

I think they had a drive to increase diversity. When we are in a situation where British nurses, doctors and midwives cannot find jobs, we have to speak up and say something has gone very wrong.

My Son In Law works for an
International household name in the finance industry. In his area of expertise (IT testing) virtually all his uk team have been recruited from India. Very few were born or educated in the UK.

And yet those in power are saying we all need to start having kids/more kids in order to preserve the British culture! It's hard enough for the current population to find enough money/work without bringing more family members into the same situation! Interesting, the official welfare/unemployment benefit stats show that the largest group claiming benefits are unemployed, mid life (I refuse to say 'middle-aged!!) white British women. I couldn't believe it myself, but the numbers are there for all to see (if you know where to look)

Once past teenager most people move to where the jobs are rather expect the jobs to come to them. I know very few people who moved back to their home town post university most moved somewhere new for work. I appreciate that no one moves for their saturday job.

Can people please clarify whether they are talking about Indian nationality or Indian sub continent with multiple nationalities.

@frozendaisy there’s pros and cons to that, it could be argued less office space is a good thing as it leaves more space for homes. Good environmentally too to have less people commuting. There are a lot of right wing business people/politicians wanting everyone back in the office; but they often don’t have the horrific commutes those at the bottom do. It’s common in London to spend two hours a day commuting in, which isn’t easy (I used to do three hours a day - fifteen hours a week just spent commuting).

There are social plusses to coming in like you say… I think the ideal is to give people a choice or at least offer hybrid working so that they’re not exhausting themselves.

The world definitely is changing rapidly and part of the problem is politicians often are more interested in older voters, so we get lots of policies which don’t help younger people. For example why aren’t second homes banned so that there are more housing options for young people? Yet we have over 45s housing developments.

I’m not Canadian but have few Canadian friends and sometimes viral Canadian posts come on my social media feed

A few years ago a Canadian woman made a post about discriminatory hiring at Tim Hortons after getting fired, claiming indian management preferring to hire Indians. I didn’t think anything of it at the time because I don’t even live there and many social media posts can stretch the truth

This year another viral post about Tim hortons came up on my feed, the creator was a WOC and didn’t even specifically mention Indian people but it was implied. It was talking about how the quality and customer service had really declined, lots of Canadians who previously enjoyed TH agreed in the comments.

That’s just one random example I’m aware of and I’m not even Canadian

There is a massive problem with lots of reasons.

I think that there’s a lot of adults doing the jobs that school leavers and other young people used to do because they understandably need 2 or 3 mini jobs to pay the bills. Full time work in low paid industries like retail are increasingly rare and some are even zero hours.

Somebody mentioned the “who you know rather than what you know” problem. There’s a local industrial where the KFC is all South Asian while the McDonalds a few doors down is much more reflective of local population and more mixed. I wouldn’t know how to distinguish people from South Asian countries without asking them so can’t say Indian but it’s a pattern that I’ve noticed.

Retail in particular are about having as few staff as possible to maximise profits. Costs like NI and utility costs in recent years have massively increased and presumably warehouses are cheaper to run. If there’s fewer jobs to go to, people will stay longer- especially if they have been employed long enough to have perks like extra paid on Sunday.

Because they use Indians living in their own country who are cheaper to employ. I think what my dh finds annoying in jobs he has had in this sector is so many depts are outsourced to India because they’re cheap and the uk staff are left to sort out bugs, inferior code and lack of critical thinking and ability to sort out problems whilst supporting Indian teams to basically take UK jobs and sometimes their own!

Its madness.

Indeed. It often isn’t cheaper in the end. When you factor in the time difference, different public holidays and let’s say a very different approach to problem solving, having a testing team based in India caused numerous project delays. And then theres’s the re-work….

That is probably the case but YP are being hammered with costs. London for example is becoming more inaccessible for them.