Britain's employers are struggling to hire staff as lockdown lifts, amid an exodus of overseas workers caused by the Covid pandemic and Brexit, industry figures reveal. According to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) and recruitment firm Adecco, employers plan to hire at the fastest rate in eight years, led by the reopening of hospitality and retail sectors as pandemic restrictions are relaxed in England and Wales.
However, the CIPD warned of a sharp decline in EU workers, fuelling labour shortages. Separate figures from Adzuna showed rapid hiring growth, with almost 1m vacancies listed, up 18% on six weeks ago. But the number of overseas job searches from western Europe and North America halved – a decline of about 250,000 – since February 2020.
Andrew Hunter, co-founder of Adzuna, said: “There is hot competition for staff, with many hospitality and retail workers having left the industry. There are also far fewer foreign workers seeking employment in the UK, with overseas interest in UK jobs more than halving from before the pandemic.”
Business leaders have warned that a lack of overseas workers would put a “handbrake on the recovery”, with as many as 1.3 million estimated to have left the UK since late 2019. Gerwyn Davies, senior labour market adviser at the CIPD, said: “New limits to the supply of unskilled migrant labour and the switch to new ways of working presents many employers with an incentive to review job quality.”
The CIPD survey of over 1,000 UK employers found the balance expecting to add jobs was 27% for Q2 2021, up from 11% in Q1, the highest since February 2013. Unemployment has stabilised, helped by the furlough scheme extension until September. The Bank of England expects the jobless rate to peak at almost 5.5% after furlough ends.
