State of the Market

[jamesbrown]

Agreed. And I don't blame immigrants.

While the British government could have "rescued" us by not having the mass immigration of the past few years, I think this would have been protectionist/anti free-market and not desirable for the country as a whole in that respect.
Immigration is a symptom of the problem, not the cause.

Right, although there are two parallel developments, immigration and offshoring. You cannot isolate an economy to fight these structural changes (without dire consequences, such as persistent inflation and higher taxes). I admire anyone who gives contracting a go, it takes some courage. The economy will probably improve quite soon after the next GE as interest rates decline and confidence returns, and I hope all of you that are out of work will pick up new gigs in due course. At the same time, these underlying forces are going nowhere and the economy is cyclical, so it's worth formulating a plan, even at this late stage.

[sadkingbilly]

This is true of many immigrants. But many others are actively here stealing British intellectual property. Many bring their relatives over precisely when they need expensive medical care and abuse our healthcare system. Many bring their children in for free education at precisely the years it would cost them most at home to send them to school. Many abuse our tax system. Many play the system to gain British passports.

Layered on top of some demographics of immigrations who openly hate the Brits and all we stand for, they openly say it, you only have to listen to what they say at Hyde Park corner etc.

let's see....................
1) English Defence League
2) National Action
3) Britain First
4)All of the above

answers on a £20 note please.

[SueEllen]

China are producing cheap EV cars now. The US and Germans wont be able to compete, so they will to slap large tariffs on Chinese cars. So much for 'competing in the global market place'

They keep catching fire very randomly.

Oh and it will be the EU not Germany slapping large tariffs on Chinese cars. I suspect it can done using an environmental tariff.

[gables]

No one could have foresaw this shift in such a relatively short space of time…jobs have hundreds of applicants now that just wasn’t the case 10/20 years ago …PMO job £150 /inside?! any takers?

Would depend on the role within the PMO, which from I've seen can be junior admin staff with a team manager.

Exacerbates.

what's a PMO? another useless so-called 'XXX Manager' ??

From memory PMO = Project Management Office but not necessarily the PMs but the team\office that tries to ensure that the orgs project management processes are adhered to by said PMs.

[Snooky]

No amount of protectionist or anti-immigrant legislation is going to rescue you

I disagree, to some extent. Where we have fairly free movement, allowing workers to do jobs in the UK that can't be done elsewhere (or the client prefers them to be done onshore), UK resident workers are at a disadvantage to foreign workers whose aim is to work here for long enough to earn a sizeable amount of income relative in terms of their home country. The migrant workers may pay the same taxes and have the same costs while they're here, but they don't have the same long-term costs a UK resident may have if they wish to have a tolerable or even prosperous future in the UK.

A simple example: I know several Polish people who worked in the UK at rates below what a UK worker might expect, they told me that they were just keeping enough to live on but the rest was for building a nice big house back home. The UK worker who tries to compete with those lower rates will find themselves at a significant disadvantage to those Polish workers, because demand has been artificially reduced by allowing an increase in supply of those skills (i.e. allowing , thus lowering costs, yet local cost of living hasn't reduced to account for it.

I've also worked with many, many "onshored" Indian guys, all lovely and competent people, who did exactly the same. A couple of my colleagues had several servants back at home in India, yet their company charged them at a far lower rate than UK resident staff.

I wasn't pro-Brexit, but I understand completely why quite a number of Leavers were hoping Brexit would reduce this genuine problem. Instead, Government has just opened up migration from other quarters to assuage large businesses who'd prefer not to have higher staffing costs.

Immigration is a completely different issue; then the worker has committed to a life here (usually) and will bear the same long term costs as other citizens, so they'll need to earn at a similar level. The only problem then is when does a population become too big for our infrastructure, even if we extend it.

[jamesbrown]

I disagree, to some extent.

I’m not arguing about the relationship between migration and wages. That has been studied to death and most of these studies point to a weak negative effect, mainly at the low end. I’m saying that attempting to fight these structural changes in the economy is pissing into the wind. There are all sorts of people you may struggle to compete with, including recent immigrants, UK citizens that live with their parents, old people that simply want something to do and are wage insensitive. There’s no point getting angry with these people who can compete at lower cost or have an “unfair” advantage. It’s the failure to accept personal agency (or the tendency to blame immigrants rather than accept partial responsibility through lack of foresight and action) that I take issue with. If you can’t compete in some sector of the economy, then think about how best to compete elsewhere. Don’t sit around waiting for these quite obvious trends to embed.

[dsc]

I’m not arguing about the relationship between migration and wages. That has been studied to death and most of these studies point to a weak negative effect, mainly at the low end. I’m saying that attempting to fight these structural changes in the economy is pissing into the wind. There are all sorts of people you may struggle to compete with, including recent immigrants, UK citizens that live with their parents, old people that simply want something to do and are wage insensitive. There’s no point getting angry with these people who can compete at lower cost or have an “unfair” advantage. It’s the failure to accept personal agency (or the tendency to blame immigrants rather than accept partial responsibility through lack of foresight and action) that I take issue with. If you can’t compete in some sector of the economy, then think about how best to compete elsewhere. Don’t sit around waiting for these quite obvious trends to embed.

Not only immigrants do work for less money, look at people who graduated 3-5yrs ago, they will often work for super low wages just to have a job, why aren't they being blamed? what about all those contractors who will work for any rate after 12-18months of not working simply because they've maxed out all the credit cards, burned through their war chest and can't afford their mortgage payments? not blaming them?

Current job market is really tough and that's a fact, there's jack tulip positions and trillions of people looking, so wages have dropped and will drop, agents will try silly rates on etc.

[Cookielove]

I’m not arguing about the relationship between migration and wages. That has been studied to death and most of these studies point to a weak negative effect, mainly at the low end. I’m saying that attempting to fight these structural changes in the economy is pissing into the wind. There are all sorts of people you may struggle to compete with, including recent immigrants, UK citizens that live with their parents, old people that simply want something to do and are wage insensitive. There’s no point getting angry with these people who can compete at lower cost or have an “unfair” advantage. It’s the failure to accept personal agency (or the tendency to blame immigrants rather than accept partial responsibility through lack of foresight and action) that I take issue with. If you can’t compete in some sector of the economy, then think about how best to compete elsewhere. Don’t sit around waiting for these quite obvious trends to embed.

How bloody condescending…”the failure to accept personal agency”….hilarious!!!

People are allowed their views and they may not concur with yours…you ain’t the thought police …

[TheDude]

To answer my own question, I think part of the problem is that IT has become too easy.
Back in the day, computer programming was intellectually difficult and complex, and this difficulty provided a barrier to entry because many candidates were not capable of getting up to speed with the technology.

Nowadays it is a lot easier due to frameworks and GUIs, resulting in millions being able to gain the skills.

Horsetulip.

I used to work with many people who worked 'back in the day'

Many found it hard to get to grips with modern programming paradigms and resorted to bluster and war stories about the legacy stuff they have worked with.

Some technologies and sectors are harder than others. Some skills are more in demand than others. These pay accordingly. That has always been the case

[TheDude]

I saw a recent quote from a leader on Surrey University's AI PhD course saying that if they had the capacity, they could churn out hundreds of PhD students a year and they would all get great, high paying jobs. Clearly not everyone has the talent to do a PhD but the AI talent race has been going on for about 10 years and really hotted up in the last couple.

But how long will this last?

Lots of people have the talent to do a PhD.

That is why there are so many unemployed PhDs out there.