State of the Market

[SussexSeagull]

Over 50% of non-EU immigrants come over to do relatively low paid jobs in health and social care, retail, education, hospitality and transport. All sectors that already can't attract enough UK born workers.

Who exactly is going to train people? Most companies don't invest much in staff training and development of staff as they see it as a drain on the bottom line.

Many people slag off universities and suggest large proportions of students should do an apprenticeship instead. But who is going to create apprenticeships for say, 100,000 extra students a year? Many existing apprenticeship schemes are poor with high dropout rates.

I totally agree that we need to significantly improve the numbers and quality of UK born people in the sectors above as well as high growth/high paid jobs in STEM, but I doubt any UK government is going to be able to achieve this in the next 10-15 years.

As I said, it remains what happens in reality. The problem is this country has never really had a grown up conversation about immigration and it became something decided behind closed doors between industry and the government without the public really being consulted. I think the care sector genuinely struggled to recruit but in IT I think the problem was business didn't want to pay money for skilled people. I suspect your average Home Office official when confronted with a large consultancy complaining they couldn't find any C++ Developers didn't have the knowledge to tell them to retrain people who knew similar languages.

[eek]

As I said, it remains what happens in reality. The problem is this country has never really had a grown up conversation about immigration and it became something decided behind closed doors between industry and the government without the public really being consulted. I think the care sector genuinely struggled to recruit but in IT I think the problem was business didn't want to pay money for skilled people. I suspect your average Home Office official when confronted with a large consultancy complaining they couldn't find any C++ Developers didn't have the knowledge to tell them to retrain people who knew similar languages.

Or the fact you can't find C++ Developers for £40,000 is because the going rate for that skillset is £55,000...

[SchumiStars]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce8yn0d310zo

Office based is being pushed now. Whether people like it or not. There is no growth sitting at home with your slippers on.

[avonleigh]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce8yn0d310zo

Office based is being pushed now. Whether people like it or not. There is no growth sitting at home with your slippers on.

Not IT staff though I don't think.

[dsc]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce8yn0d310zo

Office based is being pushed now. Whether people like it or not. There is no growth sitting at home with your slippers on.

Depends on the type of work you do, hybrid is still the norm I'd say. If you are client facing then office based makes sense, if you are doing some basement based IT tulip and never even talk to people, what difference does it make?

[dsc]

Or the fact you can't find C++ Developers for £40,000 is because the going rate for that skillset is £55,000...

Ah the age old:

- can't get any good people
- what's your budget?
- ideally below 30k

[avonleigh]

Depends on the type of work you do, hybrid is still the norm I'd say. If you are client facing then office based makes sense, if you are doing some basement based IT tulip and never even talk to people, what difference does it make?

Exactly. No reason for most of IT staff to be in a office. Don't buy this notion that people put their feet up at home. Everybody I know says they get more work done remotely.

[Smartie]

As I said, it remains what happens in reality. The problem is this country has never really had a grown up conversation about immigration and it became something decided behind closed doors between industry and the government without the public really being consulted. I think the care sector genuinely struggled to recruit but in IT I think the problem was business didn't want to pay money for skilled people. I suspect your average Home Office official when confronted with a large consultancy complaining they couldn't find any C++ Developers didn't have the knowledge to tell them to retrain people who knew similar languages.

Some people have had that conversation - the issue has been raised, but as with all issues these days, governments are not prepared to offer hard choices to the electorate. Mostly because the electorate will vote for tax cuts AND more spending and generally an easier life for themselves rather than what is in the long term interests of the country.

Immigration is clearly too high - there is a limit to how many people we can successfully integrate as well as providing the required infrastructure - schools, hospitals, housing etc.
The question is, what is that limit and how do we manage it?
Given that half the residents of this country are net recipients of money (government spending less tax paid), it's clearly in our interest to focus on skilled, higher income workers who will be net positive for the country.
Unfortunately, a lot of the people we currently need are low income (not always low skilled) workers such as care workers.
A points system would be helpful for both of these requirements.
In terms of asylum, there are a lot of low skilled people coming in, but also doctors coming from Ukraine, Hong Kong and the Middle East.
We don't let them work - why?

It's easy to say we should be training our own but that takes investment and several years to ramp up. It also requires us to pay more for low paid but critically required jobs such as care workers as well as having to pay more for skilled areas such as (junior) doctors apparently.

So, all very complicated.

On topic, there's no particular reason for IT workers to be exempted from the general move towards importing labour to reduce expense.
The plumbers and builders had to suck it up when the Polish started arriving in force and we were all pretty happy to be able to get a cheaper plumber, or a plumber at all.

The solution is likely to be a long term one over at least ten years.
Set up a points system with more points for high incomes and critical roles.
At the same time begin to ramp up training for critical roles and pay levels for those roles.
Adjust the points system every year as supply of home-grown critical roles increase to focus more on high skilled, high income immigrants.

Of course, attracting the high value immigrants requires the UK to be attractive to them and we'll be competing with other countries there, so a well functioning society and lower taxes might be helpful. Which reduces the money available to invest in the required skills and training. Sigh.

[quackhandle]

You have to ask yourself why would you want to go back to this..?



qh

[SchumiStars]

You have to ask yourself why would you want to go back to this..?



qh

I love it. Makes you feel part of something. Like a cog, part of a machine.

Every person there has paid ~£10 to travel for the day adding to the economy.

There is no growth of the economy when there is no spending.