Britain’s employers are struggling with the worst staff shortages since the late 1990s, amid a sharp drop in overseas workers due to Covid and Brexit.
According to government figures, there has been an exodus from the country of EU workers, which has gathered pace since the pandemic struck.
Many among the more than one million EU citizens who have left – including thousands of Greeks and Cypriots – returned to their home countries, leaving Britain’s coronavirus-hit businesses desperately short now of labour and complaining they are unable to fill staff vacancies.
The Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) and the accountancy firm KPMG said the number of available workers plunged in June at the fastest rate since 1997.
Recruitment firms are reporting hiring challenges across several sectors of the economy, led by shortfalls in areas such as transport and logistics, hospitality, manufacturing and construction.
The country’s hospitality industry, which is heavily dependent on foreign-born labour, has been among the hardest hit by staff shortages.
As well as the trouble recruiting chefs, kitchen porters, cleaners and warehouse staff recorded in previous months, the snapshot indicated that issues for employers were spreading to sectors such as finance, IT, accounting and engineering.
Employers are finding added complications as fewer EU workers travel to Britain because of Covid-19 border controls and the government’s post-Brexit immigration rules.
According to the REC and KPMG survey of more than 400 recruitment firms, a sharp rise in hiring demand led to the unprecedented fall in the availability of candidates in June. Recruiters noted that increased hiring, Brexit, pandemic-related uncertainty and the furlough scheme all weighed on the number of jobseekers available.
An estimated 1.3 million non-UK workers have left the country during the pandemic. Business leaders said easing post-Brexit immigration rules could help address shortages, but also called for further investment in skills and training from the government to increase the numbers of domestic candidates.
Employment experts believe people are being put off from work in certain sectors that have developed reputations for low pay and poor conditions in recent years, and that concerns over continuing high rates of Covid-19 are also having an impact.
Analysis by UK Hospitality found 80 per cent of businesses reported vacancies for front-of-house roles, 85 per cent for chef roles, 47 per cent for housekeeping and 43 per cent for assistant or general managers.
Some restaurant owners are worried that this could lead to the closure of many restaurants, especially smaller establishments. Pubs are also scrambling to recruit staff, prompting Tim Martin, owner of JD Wetherspoons, a chain that owns nearly a thousand pubs, to urge the government to allow more migrants from the EU to work in Britain. Martin was an ardent advocate of Brexit.
The freight, construction and health sectors are also struggling to fill vacancies, adding to the rising alarm of owners and their shareholders. They have been urging the government to make it easier to hire workers from EU countries. Under new post-Brexit immigration rules, EU citizens not already settled in Britain have no automatic right to work in the country and the new immigration system gives priority to high-skilled workers.
Britain’s shipping and freight industry has warned that Britain is facing a mounting delivery crisis because of a shortage of drivers. Industry officials say supermarkets risk seeing supply chains erode because of the labour shortfall. Last month trucking company bosses urged Prime Minister Boris Johnson to allow them greater access to the EU labour market by introducing temporary worker visas for Heavy Goods Vehicle drivers.
They say the shortfall is partly the result of pandemic delays in testing new drivers and partly the result of at least 15,000 drivers from EU countries not returning to Britain after leaving last year during the lockdown.
So far, their request has been rebuffed. The Home Office said in a statement in response to the plea that employers should “focus on investing in our domestic workforce, rather than relying on labour from abroad.”
