UK employers are struggling to hire staff due to a sharp fall in the number of available EU workers as Covid and Brexit fuel a worker exodus.
Experts from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development said that employers plan to hire at the fastest rate in eight years, led by the reopening of the hospitality and retail sectors, as pandemic restrictions are relaxed in England and Wales on Monday.
“The net employment intentions figure for Q2 has risen sharply to +27 points from +11 in the winter 2020/21 report. This is due to both a halving of redundancy intentions, down from 20% to 12%, and a rise in recruitment intentions. The improvement has again been driven by the sector, which saw an 18 percentage point increase since the last quarter,” said the report.
However, the exodus of foreign workers is aggravating a shortage of candidates, with more than 10 jobs on offer for every job-seeker in some cities, according to a survey conducted by job search website Adzuna.
Job adverts on Adzuna jumped to 987,800 in the first week of May, up by 18% from the end of March, which was before the reopening of non-essential retailers and hospitality firms for outdoor service on 12 April.
Adzuna said 250,000 fewer job-seekers from western Europe and North America applied for work in the United Kingdom per month between February and April than before the pandemic.
“There are also far fewer foreign workers seeking employment in the UK with overseas interest in UK jobs more than halving from before the pandemic, hitting these industries hard,” Andrew Hunter, a co-founder of Adzuna, said.
“UK employers can no longer rely on overseas workers to plug employment gaps,” Hunter said.
