State of the Market

[uk contractor]

This 100%....

As an aside it is not just IT just been in Primark today, what an eye opener....I reckon 90% of the staff were Indian you would not think you were in a store in the UK, security, tills, shop floor, managers....you name it...very few non Indians employed.

How was this ever allowed to happen....Brits should have priority simple as that....but now were all snookered .....it is not just in IT it seems...

Yep not just IT that sneaky deal our useless PM signed with the Indian PM recently just solidified the blatant onshoring & replacement of UK born workers in all industries....Asda is the same as Primark non indian staff wise as are many of the high street now if anything its accelerating and I could take an educated guess that of the 8M poor souls on universal credit now 99.9% of those were born in the UK & would rather do some hard work (if it were an even playing field!).

[herman_g]

As far as I can tell the whole of Europe ... except Switzerland .... is as bad as here.

That's nonsense.

Even Greece, where I spend most of my time, has not had a cost of living crisis like the UK. For example during peak energy prices, the government was heavily subsidizing everybody's bills.

My client (a top 5 Dutch bank) is persistently losing contractors to their competitors. There is definitely a shortage of contractors in the Netherlands. The bank has started recruiting UK remote contractors - 3 in my "tribe" in the last 6 weeks. 2 of those contractors I've wotked with beforew in the UK and they have both been out of work for over a year).

[SussexSeagull]

Agent refused to put me forward for a contract yesterday as I don't have a degree. Couldn't believe it. Been doing this role for 28 years.

As a fellow non graduate (peaked at HND level) I was going to say that is nonsense by the agent and as never happened to me, although it is entirely possible it has and UI never found out about it.

[willendure]

A lot say they want to emigrate ... but to which country? As far as I can tell the whole of Europe ... except Switzerland .... is as bad as here....and good luck trying to get into Switzerland. The Middle East .. especially Dubai ... is often mentioned but it's simply too hot there for at least half the year. Australia is a nightmare ... at least 40 people applying for each job. New Zealand maybe?

If everywhere is going down the pan, maybe we need to step back and wonder why?

The "west" has a problem, and that problem is that the biggest generation is the baby boomers and they are retiring. They had less kids than earlier generations, and in almost all countries down the generations gen X, millenial, gen Z the size gets smaller. It means our workforce is shrinking and therefore our GDP is getting smaller and our countries are getting poorer. GDP = workforce size * productivity.

That is a big part of what this is all about, because one "solution" is to take in lots of immigrants to make up the population shortfall. The difficulty of course is that it creates social tension.

Interesting cases are Canada and Japan.

Canada was the most immigration friendly country in the West for a long time. Much less so now, because the social issues eventually got too much.

Japan just doesn't like foreigners so the immigration solution was not followed there (changing now though, I believe)! They also had their baby boom much earlier so their economy is ahead of the rest of us in terms of its decline so we can use it as a window into our possible future. When a population shrinks those that remain inherit and accumulate the wealth, so individual Japanese can be very well off despite the state of their countries finances.

USA has a millenial generation that is larger than the boomers. In 2030 when they enter the second half of their careers and maximum earning, the USA will have a new productivity boom. There is no doubt in my mind that the USA is going to find itself back on top for so many reasons.

China has the fastest aging population of all - on average, obviously we all age 1 day at a time! China is so screwed. I think a decade from now there will be some kind of famine with a huge chunk of the population dying off or some other horific scenario such as civil war.

India still has the classic pyramid shaped demographics, with few older people and as you go down in age each generation is bigger, with a a high birth rate at the bottom. That explains the strong consumer led boom there.

Dubai and the middle east is hot, but you get used to it. In the UK when it gets hot its just a couple of days at a time and we have no time to acclimatize. If its hot all the time, then after a couple of weeks its just normal. My dad spent most of his working life over there and loved it. I remember cycling around on my bike in 45C as a kid. When it hits 25C in the UK I just melt.

[dsc]

I hear a lot of "I'm leaving!", usually in the same breath as complaining about immigration. Not on this forum of course, God forfend!

As if there is some special open-arms policy in the rest of the world for negative, grumpy old British blokes.

As if the destination countries aren't under similar pressures with similar problems, or worse.

In fact it's as you are finding it. In addition to having to satisfy the rules and restrictions, you would have to basically abandon your life here. I've only lived part of my life here and I wouldn't want to do it again

It makes me wonder how invested people are, how many friends they have. How much they value their neighbours and their role in their society.

The whole "I'm leaving!" usually comes from people who have no idea how hard emigration is and who have never lived outside of their own country. Moving your whole family, moving your kids away from their friends / yourself from your friends / family is super hard on most people, let alone having to navigate life in a place where they don't speak your language. When I moved to the UK almost 20yrs ago I was young, didn't have many strong friendships back in Poland and it was hard enough to adjust, I think it took around 10yrs to feel kind of like home here and another 10yrs to start to get used to it.

[Cookielove]

Yep not just IT that sneaky deal our useless PM signed with the Indian PM recently just solidified the blatant onshoring & replacement of UK born workers in all industries....Asda is the same as Primark non indian staff wise as are many of the high street now if anything its accelerating and I could take an educated guess that of the 8M poor souls on universal credit now 99.9% of those were born in the UK & would rather do some hard work (if it were an even playing field!).

Yep that "deal" means Indian workers will be cheaper for employers to hire....stupidity and no thought for UK born workers...you could not make it up!

It s not an even playing field at all...

[Cookielove]

We rented it out for a few years to holidaymakers when the financial crisis hit us hard. They just treat it like a zoo. Sitting on expensive interior furniture with sun lotion on. Leaving the air conditioning on all day. Etc. The long term rental market has its own issues, mostly squatters rights. There are loads of properties for sale over there that come complete with squatters. I kid you not. They have some kind of rights over there worse than we have.

But keeping it would be the best outcome. Keeping both places would be wonderful but it needs me to land an outside contract that is totally remote. A big ask at present.

I know renting out is fraught with difficulties as so many people just don't care...not easy.

I once rented out my flat years ago never again and it was rented to a doctor a "professional" but the place was wrecked they even melted the inside of the fridge...it was grim and I vowed never again....good tenants are like hens teeth. Ended up selling it as I was working abroad for a few years.

That sounds terrible properties for sale with squatters !

[willendure]

Yep that "deal" means Indian workers will be cheaper for employers to hire....stupidity and no thought for UK born workers...you could not make it up!

It s not an even playing field at all...

This country is no longer a rich country and is getting poorer still and will continue to get poorer. Its not that its an uneven playing field and us white British used-to-the-good-life folk are being cheated, so much as that 30 years of underinvestment in our country is now an inescapable reality and a race the bottom.

We were only rich in the first place because we created an "uneven playing field" 200 years ago that saw us extract the wealth of our subjects in the empire. I guess that today we are just experience reversion to the mean for the standard of living to be expected in a small country.

That said, I would prefer if we took the Japanese approach and just let our population shrink instead of filling in with immigrants. The country might be poorer in terms of GBP, but we would be better off individually.

[sadkingbilly]

But keeping it would be the best outcome. Keeping both places would be wonderful but it needs me to land an outside contract that is totally remote. A big ask at present.

I've got one of those
and NO degree, and no 'best of' rubbish either.
funny old life.

oh, and i'm not Indian, either.

[dsc]

[...]
That said, I would prefer if we took the Japanese approach and just let our population shrink instead of filling in with immigrants. The country might be poorer in terms of GBP, but we would be better off individually.

How did Japan solve the issue of retirement funds? surely they have some sort of national fund which is paid into by working people, so if you slash the amount of working people due to shrinking population, you are effectively slowly closing off the money tap which means the debt goes sky high (especially with Japan where they have so many long living elderly). If you let the population shrink for a long time, in an extreme case you'll just have a country full of retired people with absolutely no one working and the whole thing just collapses.