A shortage of workers is driving up wages: are we entering a new economic era?

[PeanutButter]

20 minutes ago, shlomo said:

Did they leave for more money or decided they never wanted to work again fulltime?

More money. Waaay more.

[shlomo]

19 minutes ago, PeanutButter said:

More money. Waaay more.

Inflation is going to go crazy.

[Cocha]

1 hour ago, yelims said:

If only those underpaid workers could go to their bosses and say “so I could earn more money elsewhere in Europe, how about a raise?”

Oh wait nvm

The low paid who have had their wages supressed for years are now seeing pay and conditions increase. Personally I'm very happy to see this. Perhaps if those who were to become remainics had listened to the genuine concerns of those who were suffering this for years and years, enough could have been done about it to ensure you remained in your precious EU as well. However, these genuine concerns were not listened to, instead they were just shouted down as being racist and xenophobic. It could all have been so different and I think that is why remaniacs are finding it so hard to deal with, the Brexit thread being a fine example. Deep down they know it is their own fault we are no longer part of the EU and lashing out in anger is their only way of coping.

[yelims]

21 minutes ago, Cocha said:

The low paid who have had their wages supressed for years are now seeing pay and conditions increase. Personally I'm very happy to see this. Perhaps if those who were to become remainics had listened to the genuine concerns of those who were suffering this for years and years, enough could have been done about it to ensure you remained in your precious EU as well. However, these genuine concerns were not listened to, instead they were just shouted down as being racist and xenophobic. It could all have been so different and I think that is why remaniacs are finding it so hard to deal with, the Brexit thread being a fine example. Deep down they know it is their own fault we are no longer part of the EU and lashing out in anger is their only way of coping.

Yet wages are rising faster in EU and US must be Brexit 

while low paid are trapped in a small isolated economy with a government that continues to let in hundreds of thousands (and even fly them in from Kabul)

Edited September 2, 2021 by yelims

[shlomo]

17 minutes ago, yelims said:

Yet wages are rising faster in EU and US must be Brexit 

while low paid are trapped in a small isolated economy with a government that continues to let in hundreds of thousands (and even fly them in from Kabul)

Does it upset you that the government likes the Taliban more than you

[yelims]

11 hours ago, shlomo said:

Does it upset you that the government likes the Taliban more than you

Lol 

https://www.bigissue.com/latest/employment/businesses-are-queueing-up-to-offer-afghan-refugees-jobs/

[shlomo]

43 minutes ago, yelims said:

Lol 

https://www.bigissue.com/latest/employment/businesses-are-queueing-up-to-offer-afghan-refugees-jobs/

Worker shortages everywhere, it is coronovirus, some places are in lockdown and others no longer want to work, the supply chain is in meltdown 

[yelims]

10 minutes ago, shlomo said:

Worker shortages everywhere, it is coronovirus, some places are in lockdown and others no longer want to work, the supply chain is in meltdown 

Except no empty shelves here, no rotting produce in fields, no businesses (and employees) going under, beer is available in pubs

while wages and gdp growing faster than uk

covid makes issues bad but Brexit which is unique to uk pushes thing over a cliff into a crisis

anyways I thought Covid was declared as over in UK with all restrictions lifted, how long will Brexiteers try to hide behind that excuse?

Edited September 3, 2021 by yelims

[shlomo]

Just now, yelims said:

Except no empty shelves here, no rotting produce in fields, no businesses (and employees) going under, beer is available in pubs

while wages and gdp growing faster than uk

covid makes issues bad but Brexit which is unique to uk pushes thing over a cliff into a crisis

Prices will rise in the EU as well, the guy I work with his brother works for an international window company and he was saying, the UK and  Germany and Ireland all have run out of EE willing to work for low wages 

[yelims]

7 minutes ago, shlomo said:

Prices will rise in the EU as well, the guy I work with his brother works for an international window company and he was saying, the UK and  Germany and Ireland all have run out of EE willing to work for low wages 

Nowhere near as much inflation figures were out for euro zone only yesterday max is 3%

 

BTW if that’s the case then what was the point of brexit?

If Tories truly cared for low paid:

* why are they removing not adding workers rights?

* why they not allocate any money for training?

* why not raise minimum wages?

* why continue to import hundreds of thousands lowly educated immigrants?

* why not allocate anywhere near enough money for border control?

 

This whole “but but Brexit is great for lower paid” meme is cruel when one considers the lack of action from Tories and decades of them lobbying against workers rights and higher minimum wages and benefits.

In meantime lower paid workers can’t avail of better paid opportunities in Europe and are trapped in smaller uk economy like some sort of medieval serfs tied to the land, not daring to question their elite lords.

[shlomo]

1 minute ago, yelims said:

Nowhere near as much inflation figures were out for euro zone only yesterday max is 3%

 

BTW if that’s the case then what was the point of brexit?

If Tories truly cared for low paid:

* why are they removing not adding workers rights?

* why they not allocate any money for training?

* why not raise minimum wages?

* why continue to import hundreds of thousands lowly educated immigrants?

* why not allocate anywhere near enough money for border control?

 

This whole “but but Brexit is great for lower paid” meme is cruel when one considers the lack of action from Tories and decades of them lobbying against workers rights and higher minimum wages and benefits.

In meantime lower paid workers can’t avail of better paid opportunities in Europe and are trapped in smaller uk economy like some sort of medieval serfs tied to the land, not daring to question their elite lords.

I am not going to argue with you about Brexit as i voted remain, I think supply chains are collapsing all over the world 

[yelims]

Just now, shlomo said:

I am not going to argue with you about Brexit as i voted remain, I think supply chains are collapsing all over the world 

If a whataboutism makes you feel better then ok, burying head in sand is a common response when presented with a disastrous change 

[Casual-observer]

24 minutes ago, shlomo said:

Prices will rise in the EU as well, the guy I work with his brother works for an international window company and he was saying, the UK and  Germany and Ireland all have run out of EE willing to work for low wages 

East Europe ran out of low wage EE's to provide, it's tapped out. 

I temped at a warehouse between jobs two years ago and they were so desperate for workers they were having to rely on Gypsies whom were basically using it as an avenue to steal, they were setting the fire alarms off and throwing stuff over the fence.

Of what temp EE's remained many were nigh on pensioners who couldn't speak a word of English. 

 

[shlomo]

22 minutes ago, Casual-observer said:

East Europe ran out of low wage EE's to provide, it's tapped out. 

I temped at a warehouse between jobs two years ago and they were so desperate for workers they were having to rely on Gypsies whom were basically using it as an avenue to steal, they were setting the fire alarms off and throwing stuff over the fence.

Of what temp EE's remained many were nigh on pensioners who couldn't speak a word of English. 

 

Yes, It was only a question of time 

[Riedquat]

1 hour ago, yelims said:

Except no empty shelves here, no rotting produce in fields, no businesses (and employees) going under, beer is available in pubs

while wages and gdp growing faster than uk

covid makes issues bad but Brexit which is unique to uk pushes thing over a cliff into a crisis

anyways I thought Covid was declared as over in UK with all restrictions lifted, how long will Brexiteers try to hide behind that excuse?

Sounds like the UK's the place to be then, the country where before much longer businesses will have to face the fact that they'll need to make a better effort on pay and conditions on jobs that they can't go cheap and nasty on by outsourcing or automation. Good times! Well, for most, anyway. Not for the ones already comfortably off who are horrified at the idea of actually paying a bit more because some of the streams of exploitation have dried up.

[MancTom]

14 hours ago, Cocha said:

The low paid who have had their wages supressed for years are now seeing pay and conditions increase. Personally I'm very happy to see this. Perhaps if those who were to become remainics had listened to the genuine concerns of those who were suffering this for years and years, enough could have been done about it to ensure you remained in your precious EU as well. However, these genuine concerns were not listened to, instead they were just shouted down as being racist and xenophobic. It could all have been so different and I think that is why remaniacs are finding it so hard to deal with, the Brexit thread being a fine example. Deep down they know it is their own fault we are no longer part of the EU and lashing out in anger is their only way of coping.

Surely we could have had higher wages anytime we wanted? Just elect politicians promising to massively increase the minimum wage. So not the EU's fault at all (as usual).

[bartelbe]

Loads of baby boomers on here going on about lazy British workers no longer having an excuse. This frustrates me because older people don't seem to understand how much the world of work has changed since their day.

We are suppose to have a flexible labour market, in which people nimbly jump from job to job and industry to industry, throughout their working lives. Workers are suppose to use their experience in on industry as transferable skills to another. Sounds great doesn't it? Slight problem, its ********.

Employers have actually got less flexible, not more. Recruitment is dominated by a computer says no culture, in which every job requires years of very specific experience and employers offer no training for people with transferable skills to learn the role.

It is even worse for young people, who find that the computer says no culture completely locks them out of all but low skilled jobs. They can have a ton of qualifications but without the work experience, that is all worthless.

Employers have got away with this because they have been able to import staff on a massive scale from the EU and via key worker/skilled worker visa schemes. Why pay to train your staff, when you can get staff trained by a company in another country?

Take the HGV driver shortage. This could be easily solved by employers. It take 8-10 weeks to train a driver. So if enough training places and high enough pay is offered, the shortage will be gone in a year, with zero migrant labour required.

Employers don't want to do this, so they won't fund training and will use shortages in the shops as a weapon to force the government to relax migration rules. This will happen sector by sector, till we are back in the same old toxic situation.

In which British workers are locked out of employment because British employers wont invest in training new staff.

[Riedquat]

2 minutes ago, bartelbe said:

Employers don't want to do this, so they won't fund training and will use shortages in the shops as a weapon to force the government to relax migration rules. This will happen sector by sector, till we are back in the same old toxic situation.

Or, in their words, back to the same old "efficient" situation where they don't have to spend money on "unproductive" stuff like training.

[bartelbe]

Just now, MancTom said:

Surely we could have had higher wages anytime we wanted? Just elect politicians promising to massively increase the minimum wage. So not the EU's fault at all (as usual).

Heard that argument before and it doesn't work for two reasons.

The first is a higher minimum wage is a floor below which pay can't fall. With an infinite supply of labour, all blue collar jobs tend to fall to this floor. Before mass free movement from new member states, many working class jobs were paid above the minimum wage level.

The second problem is enforcement. We had entire factories operating illegally in a major UK city and you expect voters to believe the government has the will to enforce minimum wage rules? Under the last Labour government their was virtually no prosecutions for breaking the law and even now it is too easy to for bad employers to dodge the rules.

Whereas as a labour shortages hits good and bad employers equally. Bad employers can't offer poverty pay and undercut good employers because if they do, they wont have any staff.

[bartelbe]

Just now, Riedquat said:

Or, in their words, back to the same old "efficient" situation where they don't have to spend money on "unproductive" stuff like training.

Yeah because a first country like Britain can win a race to the bottom and compete with developing countries based on cost.

We have to compete based on higher productivity and you achieve that with investment, which includes investment in training and skill.

It is people like you who are destroying the British economy.

[Riedquat]

2 minutes ago, bartelbe said:

Yeah because a first country like Britain can win a race to the bottom and compete with developing countries based on cost.

We have to compete based on higher productivity and you achieve that with investment, which includes investment in training and skill.

It is people like you who are destroying the British economy.

I rather assumed that the quotes around words like "efficient" were sufficient to illustrate that I was being sarcastic.

[Casual-observer]

23 minutes ago, bartelbe said:

Loads of baby boomers on here going on about lazy British workers no longer having an excuse. This frustrates me because older people don't seem to understand how much the world of work has changed since their day.

We are suppose to have a flexible labour market, in which people nimbly jump from job to job and industry to industry, throughout their working lives. Workers are suppose to use their experience in on industry as transferable skills to another. Sounds great doesn't it? Slight problem, its ********.

Employers have actually got less flexible, not more. Recruitment is dominated by a computer says no culture, in which every job requires years of very specific experience and employers offer no training for people with transferable skills to learn the role.

It is even worse for young people, who find that the computer says no culture completely locks them out of all but low skilled jobs. They can have a ton of qualifications but without the work experience, that is all worthless.

Employers have got away with this because they have been able to import staff on a massive scale from the EU and via key worker/skilled worker visa schemes. Why pay to train your staff, when you can get staff trained by a company in another country?

Take the HGV driver shortage. This could be easily solved by employers. It take 8-10 weeks to train a driver. So if enough training places and high enough pay is offered, the shortage will be gone in a year, with zero migrant labour required.

Employers don't want to do this, so they won't fund training and will use shortages in the shops as a weapon to force the government to relax migration rules. This will happen sector by sector, till we are back in the same old toxic situation.

In which British workers are locked out of employment because British employers wont invest in training new staff.

Personally I believe the labour shortage has become far more convoluted due to changes in the market which COVID accelerated. 

It's put WFH onto steroids whereas before it was largely the retreat of top end consultant's.

This is turn has enabled people with more free time (and no commute costs) to seek other earning opportunities from behind the computer screen at home, such as investing.  

You've got people earning and surviving on incomes never leaving the house such as gamers being subbed by other people watching them.

This change I believe is all cascading across the entire labour markets. Look at onlyfans, pretty girls you'd normally see working in a coffee shop are now getting either main incomes or secondary incomes from showing their t1ts online. 

When you combine these sorts of incomes you can achieve from your house leaving you with more leisure time, people are looking at more traditional jobs like driving a HGV lorry as not worth it, even with the newish higher pay. 

I also personally think current tax brackets are killing labour movement, IR35 certainly has. 

Once you hit the PAYE 40% tax threshold it dramatically reduces peoples motivation. Also instead of people being motiivated to earn a secondary income with an automatic 20% tax hit people will be looking at smarter ways to invest their time such as exploring crypto or cash in had work. 

A friend of a friend recently left a full time job in recruitment to focus full time on crypto.

Ultimately all these new methods of earning income which the young are looking at are I think hitting what I'd regard as traditional jobs.  

 

 

 

[Freki]

Found on the guardian business daily thread:

 

 

Edited September 3, 2021 by Freki

[Cocha]

2 hours ago, MancTom said:

Surely we could have had higher wages anytime we wanted? Just elect politicians promising to massively increase the minimum wage. So not the EU's fault at all (as usual).

The fault lies with our successive governments of all hues who did nothing to control cheap labour from the EU because big business loved it, as did those higher up the food chain who were happy having their cost of living subsidised due to wage suppression. Great examples of those types can be found crying in the Brexit thread.

[scottbeard]

20 hours ago, yelims said:

In last 20 years

GBP:EUR 1.59 -> 1.16 = -27%

Thats a fairly big wagecut compared to your european counterparts

But in last 10 years (Sep 2011 to Sep 2021)

GBP:EUR 1.16 -> 1.16 = No change   (see https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=GBP&to=EUR&view=10Y)

Pick your dates, and you can get any number you like.

As @Riedquatsays, I don't see the value of the pound as being a factor at all right now.