Immigration, how did we get here?

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How have we come to a place in the UK where we don't seem to be able to provide our own workforce, whether it's bar staff, surgeons or brick layers?
I know we have an aging population, but surely that can't be the only reason.
In the case of bar staff and cleaners, when we travel in Europe, it seems to me that those roles are taken by locals. Why do we have to import people from Europe to do it?
Please don't treat this as a goady thread, I am genuinely puzzled by this.

But it’s not just old age care- it’s everything. It’s not about benefits but rather the benefit of being in the U.K. and no I don’t believe many of us, immigrant or otherwise are net contributors once the time we have children. So really it’s a false economy to pay foreign workers crap wages to come over here and take on such jobs.

I don’t know the stats but I assumed net gain during your working years?
So if you picked up trained working adults surely they contribute overall?

It doesn't matter to me, but it may well matter to the countries losing those skills.

The rest of Europe have all of Europe to source staff. We no longer do!
Benefits are too high and full time work is not 'necessary' if people don't want it to be.
Stupid benefit rules ... if you earn over x you get a 55% reduction in benefit.
Cost of childcare is too high/quality not always good which puts off women returners.
People who can are retiring earlier, particularly those hit by high earner pension tax rules.

Does people can just sign and get money from the government? If so that may be part of the reason.

I can see why it matters because the housing and services are not infinite. Basically, people being paid to do nothing still use services and need houses. People coming to do the unwanted jobs also need the same services and housing. Hopefully now with a new government a honest conversation can be started. Otherwise, it is going to be the same ever.

I live in Europe. No one wants to come here and pick fruit or wait tables either. Staff are from Nepal largely. The problems here are the same in uk despite what everyone who voted remain thinks.

There was also a business man or woman on the TV saying that they kept inviting unemployed people for interviews but a lot didn't turn up or turned up and performed deliberately badly. They said that no-one ever contacted them to find out if the people turned up for the interview.

Yes but is that one person who for all you know has their own prejudices or is it fact and if so how prevalent is it? It’s like the mythical perfectly ok people who say they are autistic and then get a “free” car. Thats not how it really works in practice.

One of my sons works in a factory where they always need semi-skilled labour. It's absolutely the norm for people to come to interviews who make it very clear they don't want the job

Even in the 80s a lot of hotel and restaurants staff were spanish or Italian. That's no different.
Universities are not responsible for this at all.

I would like to think you are trolling. However, I suspect not. You really have no idea if you believe what you have posted as it's an absolute pack of garbage

I don't think those banging on about a life of leisure on benefits, realise firstly how much you get and secondly, how difficult they are to keep.

I went to grammar school in the 80s. 8% of our cohort went to university. It was pretty unusual.

Most of the girls went into nursing (no degree required - block release for college and learning on the job), teaching (teacher training college), or bank/post ofgice/insurance.

The boys did apprenticeships, joined the forces or went down the bank/insurance route.

Many of the kids who would have traditionally gone down the apprentice route end up at university, and are not necessarily the better off for it.

It isn’t really possible for under 18s to work any more because of child safeguarding laws. Stuff like not being left alone with people who haven’t been DBS checked, needing separate changing rooms to adults, etc. It’s just too much hassle.

To answer OP’s question though, employers don’t respect and support their manual employees any more. They pay them as little as possible, even going to far as to put them on zero hour contracts or make them “self employed” so they don’t have to pay them properly. No decent pensions etc. No loyalty or support. It’s unsurprising that people don’t want these jobs any more.

Secondly there are other ways to earn money nowadays. Only Fans. Sell on Etsy or EBay. Various side hustles. Why would anyone take a crap min wage job.

Thirdly as pp said, pushing everyone to get a degree means they expect better than a min wage job.

I’m degree qualified and earned 35k before kids, but I would barely break even after childcare so I didn’t work for five years. Women who would earn less definitely can’t work. You have to be pretty highly paid to be better off working and paying childcare - better paid than average anyway.

The benefit thing is insane. You can’t sign off and back on easily. You can’t sign off for a while to take a temp job then claim again. You’re not allowed to work for free to gain experience. And if you earn a single penny they take it off you, so there’s no incentive to do a little bit of work that might lead to more.

Same all over Europe and tbh a lot of jobs which were good 25 yo ago are sh*t today and only immigrants with no options will do them.

Exh has carers & out of the various care companies he has been under in 12 years, I can only remember maybe 3 of the carers who looked after him being British, the rest have all been immigrants, nobody wants to be a carer, the pay & conditions are rubbish, you only get paid for the time you are actually caring, not travelling between clients. Councils will only pay minimum wage, which doesn't help. Until caring becomes a profession with a standard training pathway & qualification, then they will always have problems with recruitment & retention.

Part of the reason that smaller numbers went to university in the 80s was because women formed a much smaller proportion of the student population. In the late 70s when I went it was 1 in 10. The norm was for women to go into traditional roles like nursing or secretarial work (obviously not now as much of an option), or low paid work in the expectation they would get married and become SAHM. Even the Head of my very selective Girls’ Grammar School gave us the advice that if we went into Medicine we would lessen our marriage prospects. A lot of those extra university places were taken up by women becoming 50 % of the university population, and then entering the work force longer term in much bigger numbers. And some low paid jobs are now done by students, certainly in this area where a high proportion do go to university. So universities are not part of the issue. Indeed it is now much harder to get into university, because a larger proportion of the population, of both sexes) are competing for those places

Also remember that the service sector has expanded massively, There simply wasn’t the same need for people to work in low paid jobs in for instance the hospitality industry. That was Tory thinking from Thatcher onwards, that we would become a service economy and needed immigration to enable that until the current batch, ironically sank her plans (because they didn’t understand the meaning of the word plan, too busy being populists).

I agree (apart from the B&H 😁). Thing is it’s not even 16 for some jobs, DS2 has been turned down for a few for being 17.

I'm guessing they won't because of safe guarding. I don't deal with the administration,but my DC is in a club that has a winter show. Everyone helping with the children must have enhanced DBS checks. There are also chaperones from the county council. All the children must be signed in and out with a register. This all stops at 16. Those 16+ have no chaperones and are allowed to wander off site.

In no right mind will an employer hire anyone that requires this much hassle.

You can get away with this if parents are made responsible. We do that with the other shows.

Responsible means you aren't supposed to leave your kids without supervision. Some do, but then it's the parents responsibilty. Clearly, with a work situation, they can't really ask the parents to be present (or semi-present).

Demographics. It’s very straightforward- if people have less children, then over time it causes labour issues. You either have to dramatically increase the amount of automation, or face labour shortages. Where the demographic profile is smoothed out rather than a pyramid, the lack of labour manifests itself in the following generations. The solution of using ever younger labour is not viable for the majority of jobs (manual labour, bar staff, etc etc).

It’s worth thinking about the workforce in 18 years as dc born now enter it

Which as you say higher automation and AI likely

We need a push to change the mindset that benefits are to be lived on and are a lifestyle. Benefits should be a stopgap, unless disabled or elderly. They, and housing, and NHS healthcare should also only be available to immigrants that have paid in for a certain amount of time, or while they are paying in, as is the case in some countries in Europe.

And lets all be honest here, the people this thread is aimed at are the ones that have no disability issues but still refuse to work, think cleaning or packing or labouring etc are beneath them (while contributing nothing) for no reason.

I agree that these people should be trained and forced to the do the menial jobs we are having to recruit immigrants for. Why can't they do them?