By Alex Masefield
The number of workers on the payroll exceeded 29m, a record high. Over 120,000 more than before coronavirus.
This has caused job vacancies ascended to a record high of almost 1.1m in September, due to employers hunting for staff in a post-pandemic period.
London is by far the worst place in the country for workers, with the highest number of people looking for jobs competing for the smallest number of spaces. Despite vacancies being 104% up from before the pandemic.
On the other side of the spectrum, Northern Ireland’s vacancies grew by 154% but with comparatively fewer people looking for jobs leaving employers struggling to find staff.
Although, Brexit has also been considered the secondary factor for the rise, Dr Jeff Gold from Leeds Beckett University stated a “decline of apprenticeships [has meant] skilled workers have been in short supply [long before] Brexit”.
A cause for this sudden spike in the mass vacancies could be as a result of people leaving the country for Europe due to Brexit finally taking action and people who held positions pre-pandemic who tragically never made it through.
When asked whether there was a possible solution to get out of the problem, Dr Jeff Gold stated “we’re not going to get out of it”, painting a potentially morbid picture of the years to come for employers and people looking for work respectively.
Transport and logistics was the sector with the highest number of vacancies with over 300%. The country suffered the effects of this in the form of a fuel crisis in September where there was not enough lorry drivers delivering petrol.
