Serious staff shortages remain in the food and drink industry despite even more people being out of work compared with a year ago. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said there were 10% less unemployed people at the end of June, against the previous three months in the UK.

Employers in the hospitality sector are having to compete for staff, driving up wages. For years it has been an industry dominated by low pay and has struggled to be seen as an attractive industry with a strong career path and opportunities to develop. As a result, employers have relied on staff from EU countries where the industry is rated more highly, but many of those employees have returned to work in the EU since Brexit.

Once furlough has finally ended in the autumn we will have a clearer picture of the jobs market in Hospitality, but it will be very hard to untangle causes - what is a result of the pandemic, what has changed because of Brexit and what are long-term weaknesses in the economy. And whilst the three-month fall in unemployment is "very heartening", the same cannot be said for filling job vacancies in sectors such as hospitality.
This data shows that small firms need to recruit and retain staff to build their own economic recovery - which means that it is vital that businesses can access the people that they need to rebuild. We work with our clients in hospitality to support them attract and keep good quality, in many instances ‘local’, candidates. Many of whom have never worked in the sector before!
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If you’re a hospitality business and need our support, we’d love to hear from you.

Job vacancies have hit their highest levels since records began with more than one million jobs up for grabs. The void has been created by Britain's departure from the European Union and Covid-19 restrictions, which some claim will have lasting damage on the labour market. 

However, the rebound in hiring has also been met with a spike in jobseekers. Back in March 2020 there were 1.2 claimants per vacancy, but this has now almost doubled to 2.2 claimants per role in June 2021, according to new analysis from the Institute for Employment Studies. On the one hand it is great to see vacancy levels are back at a pre-pandemic peak. But on the other hand, there are still significantly more claimants chasing every job than before the pandemic, with more than eight jobseekers per job in over 40 local authorities.

This brings an underlying concern for the UK jobs market into sharp focus - many of the people currently out of work aren't matching up to the jobs on offer, despite an acute talent shortage. Therefore, we’ve gone from talking about an unemployment crisis to a ‘recruitment crisis’. But in reality, we’re facing a bit of both – with many of our clients struggling to fill jobs at the same time more than two millions people are struggling to find work. 

The last 18 months have been transformative for the UK jobs market. Therefore, we’re consciously making an effort to work with our training partners to help our candidates develop the skills required to access the jobs now available. For instance, helping our candidates access ‘so called boom’ sectors’ such as tech, care, manufacturing, and logistics.
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If you have hard to fill jobs please get in touch, our high-quality (agile) candidate pool is expanding all the time and ready to take on new challenges.
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