There are not only an estimated 100,000 truck drivers missing in Great Britain, 68,929 programmers, 29,996 cooks and 6,364 joiners and carpenters are also wanted, the British statistical office ONS announced on Tuesday. In addition, tens of thousands of caregivers are still lacking.
“These recruitment difficulties are likely to dampen economic recovery by limiting companies’ ability to fill orders and meet customer demand,” commented Siren Thiru of the UK Chamber of Commerce. He locates an “acute recruitment crisis”.
The latest data support this assessment: In August, the IHS Markit purchasing managers’ index fell to a six-month low, while gross domestic product (GDP) rose by just 0.1 percent in July compared to the previous month.
Problem: Jobs are not attractive
Delivery problems are occurring around the world as a result of the fragile supply chains caused by the corona pandemic, but in Great Britain this will be exacerbated by Brexit. No more internal market also means no simple influx of workers from the EU.
In addition, the conservative government of Boris Johnson is still relying on rigid immigration rules, under the motto “British jobs for the British”.
For EU citizens who want to work in the UK, this means applying for a visa, which costs a lot of money and effort. You can hardly do this on your own, because potential employers have to act as sponsors.
In addition, the British often do not even want to do the mostly low-paid jobs that foreigners previously took over.
A government-funded short-time work program is still running in Great Britain until the end of September, after which a million people would have to return to their jobs or look for new work. It is hoped that this will alleviate the acute labor shortage.
Solution: look to Asia
Meanwhile, the British Ministry for International Trade already has an answer to the labor market problems: In future, trade policy will be geared more towards emerging economic forces in Southeast and East Asia, announced department head Liz Truss.
Indeed, the British could leverage the Commonwealth’s strengths to import labor from Asia. After all, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are also members of the alliance that was once forged from former colonies. Today the Commonwealth consists of more than 50 nations.
In any case, the global demand for British digital and financial services will double in the next ten years, predicts Truss and has already announced a “global network of next-generation trade agreements”. She blamed the UK’s decades of EU membership for a “defensive” stance. “Understandably, after 50 years in the protectionist EU, we have forgotten what trading power we were,” said the minister.
Customs controls postponed
In view of the shortage of goods, there are also faster solutions to refill the shelves on the island: Great Britain is now simply postponing the introduction of controls on imports of goods such as food from the EU to 2022.
The reason given by Brexit Minister David Frost on Tuesday was that companies were under pressure due to the consequences of the Corona crisis and the associated material shortages and needed more time to prepare. The government had previously postponed the originally planned start of customs controls by six months to October.
British tariffs on EU imports have also increased significantly since Brexit. Companies and consumers would have paid around 2.2 billion pounds (around 2.6 billion euros) in customs duties between January and July 2021. That is an increase of 42 percent compared to the same period last year, according to an analysis of government data published by the accounting firm UHY Hacker Young on Monday.
The situation could worsen from October if a new import ban on food such as chilled minced meat takes effect. Long queues at the borders are already feared today.
The British economy got off to a weak start in the second half of 2021 overall. The gross domestic product (GDP) rose in July by 0.1 percent compared to the previous month, announced the ONS statistics office on Friday. The total economic output is 2.1 percent below the level before the corona pandemic.(red.)
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