State of the Market

[Protagoras]

now the 'state of the market' thread has become the 'state of the supermarket' thread.

it just gets better and better

Common factor: government policy. Specifically, so-called "National Insurance.

[Protagoras]

I don't have any such issues when sending the butler out to collect comestibles from F&M

Blimey, your butler fetches shopping? Most would be above that.

My parents's butler wouldn't have been seen undertaking such menial duties. He'd either have required delivery or perhaps sent a footman with the driver if really urgent.

[ladymuck]

now the 'state of the market' thread has become the 'state of the supermarket' thread.

it just gets better and better

I don't have any such issues when sending the butler out to collect comestibles from F&M

[sadkingbilly]

now the 'state of the market' thread has become the 'state of the supermarket' thread.

it just gets better and better

[Manic]

Most retailers dont employ very many staff at all these days, my local Tesco seems to run on about a third of the staff since self checkout tills arrived.

According to the latest report by the ONS there were 2.76m jobs in retail in March 2025. The four-quarter average, which smooths out the seasonal variations in hiring, was 2.80m jobs in March 2025, 93,000 fewer than at the same point last year, and 364,000 fewer than in 2015.

On a four-quarter average there were 1.30m full-time and 1.50m part-time jobs. The number of full-time jobs is down 117,000 on a decade ago. Meanwhile, the number of part-time jobs is down 246,000 over the same period.



Commenting on these figures, Helen Dickinson, Chief Executive at the British Retail Consortium, said:

“Retail jobs have continued to fall, with 364,000 fewer jobs than ten years ago. More jobs have been lost in retail in a decade than exist across the whole of the fishing, car manufacture and steel-making industries combined. And while factory closures have quickly been met by promises of action, this wave of retail jobs losses appears to go unnoticed by government.

They employ loads, I didn't say they gave them all lots of hours. In fact the opposite, they run on a skeleton staff with short shifts (so they don't have to pay breaks).

[willendure]

I view the next election as being a re-run of the Brexit referendum.

Great, because that was a bloody disaster. Now wait, some snowflake is going to cry and get the mods to delete all our posts now.

[willendure]

Curiously, the large Tesco in the nearest town always has well-staffed checkouts, so that use of self-service is a matter of preference, and not the only option.

Noticed that too in my nearest large Tesco. Nice folk work there too, and its sometimes even quicker than the self serve, so I use the staffed checkouts.

[Protagoras]

Most retailers dont employ very many staff at all these days, my local Tesco seems to run on about a third of the staff since self checkout tills arrived.

Curiously, the large Tesco in the nearest town always has well-staffed checkouts, so that use of self-service is a matter of preference, and not the only option.

If only some of certain retailers would employ contractors we could sort out some appalling so-called self-service checkouts. The only ones in my experience that work 100% are those in Decathlon.

We could design, implement and most importantly actually test self-service checkouts so that the things function properly more than 30% of the time without staff intervention. It's not just me - I see lots of people queuing for a cashier while the self-service tills have no queue. And the staff don't like them either!

[rocktronAMP]

aye, - right!

Come on guys! Put a knocker on this bantering hot puffing and ruffing. The HMRC are laughing at all of us and it is not a great advertisement for professionalism.

We should be doing much better than this. I bet the bunch of us have the talent to rewrite / refactor / redesign / remodel entire codebases for a better NHS, school system or e-commerce service. We just need a better way to reach those clients and those client ought to be able find us.

I have had one interview this week for a perm job - 25 minutes with talent acquisition with 3 more stages to come, if they liked me day before yesterday.
I have had one contract interview promised for two weeks. I asked the agent several times already, he said it is coming.

I tried Hubstuff, Malt, Hackajob, Indeed and Reed job sites; and I even found a Spotify podcast called the "2 Hour Job Search". I listened to it, with very high hopes, but it is useless for UK professionals IMHO, because we are long past the university graduate level and also the job market is dominated by recruitment agencies. I like the statistics, which the author Steve Dalton quotes about USA companies, that the search strategy should go for the 99% of business outside the Big Tech Bros. It would make sense. For contractors, we would need to market ourselves direct to companies, but how, most emails would be binned. Finding the networked individual, from back in the day, university (polytechnic) is a long shot. It is USA thing, I think.

ah boo - numbers game it is and a dating thing all rolled into one economic mess of dog doo-doo. But I know the feeling that we are losing it. Fighting between ourselves is definitely divided and not united.

[kingmob]

There are other reasons too.

Part timers earning less than 5k per annum don't attract NI rates.
Minimum wage for under 18 is lower than 21+

It's why most retail stores employ loads and loads of poorly paid under 21s on zero hour contracts.

Most retailers dont employ very many staff at all these days, my local Tesco seems to run on about a third of the staff since self checkout tills arrived.

According to the latest report by the ONS there were 2.76m jobs in retail in March 2025. The four-quarter average, which smooths out the seasonal variations in hiring, was 2.80m jobs in March 2025, 93,000 fewer than at the same point last year, and 364,000 fewer than in 2015.

On a four-quarter average there were 1.30m full-time and 1.50m part-time jobs. The number of full-time jobs is down 117,000 on a decade ago. Meanwhile, the number of part-time jobs is down 246,000 over the same period.



Commenting on these figures, Helen Dickinson, Chief Executive at the British Retail Consortium, said:

“Retail jobs have continued to fall, with 364,000 fewer jobs than ten years ago. More jobs have been lost in retail in a decade than exist across the whole of the fishing, car manufacture and steel-making industries combined. And while factory closures have quickly been met by promises of action, this wave of retail jobs losses appears to go unnoticed by government.