Immigration, how did we get here?

[Sausagenbacon]

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.

My DD went to Uni, got a job in the NHS paying 27k, then another paying 34k, now works in Aus earning over £45k.

Even if she had stayed in the UK, private sector pay for her profession can easily pay 40k p.a ok not london banking salary but she loves her work helping other people and gets amazing job satisfaction.

Its such a shame the NHS treats its staff so badly.

The uk is about on par with most other countries on numbers who go to Uni @37%, thats 63% who can do trades etc etc... the problem is our education system is crap and churns out students who either don't want to work hard or are simply no good to employers.

The idea everyone goes to Uni simply isn't true.

Not everyone goes to uni but the narrative is white collar over blue collar- v dated!
no boy at private school is given the option to become a plumber and very few boys at a state school are encouraged to go into
private equity. The snobbery and class system has a lot to answer for.

I'll be encouraging the next gen in my family to learn a trade, how to do tax returns, how to run a business etc. Actual useful things rather than the shit they learn in school. If they want to go to uni fine, but learn a recession proof trade and how to run a business as well.

Honest question: what's wrong with migrant workers?

Someone mentioned being in Italy and having hotel staff from Hungary, Scotland etc.

I know lots of young people from the UK who go abroad for a few years to TEFL. I know young people who have moved to have a working holiday in Australia, doing bar work and cleaning while seeing the country. Some have chosen to stay there. People from the UK going to Spain for the summer to party and do bar work. People from the UK moving to the UAE to be estate agents.

Why does the UK think immigration into the UK is the worst thing ever? Schrodinger's immigrant is both "taking all our jobs" and "taking all our benefits". People on minimum wage are somehow "pushing up house prices".

Same problem across western Europe, people don't want to work these jobs.

The problem is not that people don’t want to work.

our workforce participation rate is nearly 80%.

our unemployment rate is around 4%.

With approximately 900k unfilled jobs in the UK, an unemployment rate of about 10% is required to fill those gaps. Keep in mind you will always have some unemployment (people unable to work, retraining etc etc) and we have very high participation rates already which suggests that very few people are taking the SAHM(D) option these days.

What there is, is simply not enough people.

Immigration isn’t because of lazy benefits scroungers. It’s because there aren’t enough people in the UK to do the number of jobs an advanced and complex economy like ours requires. The graph I posted earlier indicates that there simply aren’t enough young people. You can try making benefits less attractive, but all that does is scrape the barrel - it doesn’t magic up the numbers you need.

Have more babies, you get jobs filled. OR, increase investment in automation and higher productivity and the problem goes away that way.

a crude example: on the titanic (I rewatched titanic recently) there were approx 2k passengers for approx 1k crew. Modern cruise ships run a ratio of around 1:4 crew to passengers. Automation means that the same level of service can be provided by less people. You want to fix this? People either have to have more children, the economy offer less services, or increase automation.

Alternatively you can choose what governments globally have been doing for the last 40 years cause it’s easy: import labour.

I love your titanic example. In the middle east, people have hired help imported from poorer countries. Here we accept not to have any (so less service), and more reliant on machinery. You are totally correct that we need to either have more children, less service or increase automation.

Yes, and me. It was fine and l learned the worth of working.

It's also because workplaces expect staff to be very flexible regarding their hours and availability. Very few jobs are set hours now and fit around school age children.

A lot of jobs are not family friendly and don't fit around school age children . Employers expect flexibility now .