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UK jobs market data - April 2023

ended 17. April 2023

The latest official UK (un)employment data is being published by the Office for National Statistics on Tuesday morning at 07:00. If you'd like the chance to see your views in the local, national and trade media, please answer any or all of the following Qs:

  • What, in your experience, are the main challenges facing the jobs market at present?
  • Do you expect the jobs market to improve or deteriorate during 2023 — and why?
  • Are employers confident about hiring or are they battening down the hatches?
  • Are employees proactively asking for pay rises to keep up with inflation?
  • Are companies, many of which are under pressure for no end of reasons, struggling to offer pay rises?
  • What steps, other than pay rises, are employers taking to engage and retain staff in the current climate? Any particularly interesting examples?
  • Are you seeing examples of more over-50s returning to the workforce due to the high cost of living?
  • Why are there so many 'economically inactive’ people in the UK?

Any other thoughts or insights, jot them down.

2 responses from the Newspage community

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Editor
Samuel Mather-Holgate
Independent Financial Adviser at Mather and Murray Financial
The Uk still has a tight labour market due to a lot of EU nationals returning home post-Brexit. What the data hides is that the UK is turning into a low-wage, low-skills economy that will take decades to reverse. The majority of the vacancies are social care and hospitality roles that, although vital, would usually be filled by immigration.
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Edua Effiom
HR Consultant at face2faceHR - Streatham Hill

As an HR Consultant, I help my clients with recruitment. My experience has been that there is a skills gap and/or a recruitment shortage in some sectors. It is not only quantity but quality that is making it difficult to recruit. The need to retain high-quality staff therefore will be more important than ever.

In the sectors that I work with, it might not be the case that employees are proactively asking for pay rises. If they are headhunted or looking for alternative roles, they might use this as a bargaining tool to get a pay rise or an increase in their benefits package.

Certain sectors will struggle to offer pay rises due to the increases in costs for various reasons, for example, an increase in energy prices.

In a recent survey, young people valued work relationships rather than a 10% increase in pay. This suggests that it is important to understand what other benefits employees gain from working apart from pay.