UK labour market<\/a> is starting to stabilise, with both payroll employment and vacancies steadying in August following a sustained period of decline. <\/p>\nUnemployment remains relatively contained at 4.7 per cent, redundancies are close to pre-pandemic norms and the Bank of England now sees \u201cless of an immediate risk that the labour market would loosen very rapidly\u201d. <\/p>\n
But Kate Nicholls, chair of the UKHospitality trade body, said the industry\u2019s workforce had dropped by 10,000 people in the past month alone and that businesses were not keeping on summer staff. \u201cTwo-thirds of members say they are reducing staff hours and headcount largely due to national insurance, anticipation of further national living wage rises and uncertainty around the Employment Rights Bill.\u201d <\/p>\n
The reforms encompassed by the bill \u2014 including day one protection against unfair dismissal, a new right to guaranteed hours and an extension of statutory sick pay \u2014 will have a disproportionate effect in hospitality, where many workers are on zero or low hours contracts.<\/p>\n
The British Retail Consortium has highlighted that there are 97,000 fewer jobs in retail than last year, while vacancy rates are also dropping.<\/p>\n
Helen Dickinson, chief executive, said it was \u201cvital that the chancellor\u2019s autumn Budget does not increase costs to the high street further, or else it will be working people who will pay the price as local, flexible jobs are lost, and the cost of living continues to rise\u201d.<\/p>\n
The number of vacancies in the UK between June and August was 119,000 lower than a year ago, according to the Office for National Statistics.<\/p>\n
Andrew Murphy, chief executive of toy chain The Entertainer, which will soon be transferred into a trust owned by its 1,900 employees, said the official data was masking the pain in the jobs market because many businesses were slashing hours rather than jobs. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe still need people in stores but maybe that person was doing 20 hours before and now they are only doing 12,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have had to cut 20 per cent of hours in 70 of our smaller stores\u201d<\/p>\n
Murphy also blamed last October\u2019s Budget for increasing the burden on employers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the law of physics,\u201d he said. \u201cBusinesses have to look at every way they can reduce staffing costs, either by taking out job tasks, cutting hours, outsourcing or automating.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added that the government\u2019s move to increase national insurance contributions and lower thresholds at which companies start paying the tax \u201ctook the biscuit\u2009.\u2009.\u2009. The government has made the error of seeing everything in isolation, rather than realising the pain all these measures cause. It will push some retailers under.\u201d<\/p>\n
Spencer Craig, founder of London-based coffee chain Pure, said that \u201cfor every job we advertise \u2014 whether that\u2019s a barista, a store manager or marketing manager \u2014 we get 500 applicants. Two years ago that was about 50 applicants. It\u2019s a tough market for people to find a job at all. We\u2019re also seeing a lot more senior people applying for junior roles.\u201d<\/p>\n
Craig said Pure had started cutting staffing hours as soon as the Budget came in, and that Labour\u2019s measures amounted to \u201cbizarre policy \u2014 it\u2019s anti-employment\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cFor a government that wants to get people off the welfare bill and into employment and achieve growth, the Employment Rights Bill makes it even harder to employ people.\u201d<\/p>\n
MPs last week voted against amendments to the Employment Rights Bill <\/a>passed by the House of Lords before the summer recess that would have addressed some of employers\u2019 concerns about the new day one right to protection against unfair dismissal and a right to guaranteed hours. <\/p>\nThe government\u2019s own impact assessment suggested the bill would impose \u00a35bn in annual costs on the corporate world. <\/p>\n
However, crucial details of many of the key measures \u2014 including how the new right to guaranteed hours will work and who will be eligible \u2014 will be settled only through regulation once the bill has become law. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Retailers and restaurant groups are sounding the alarm on the UK jobs market, as applicants surge for waning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":161383,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[45,49,48,124],"class_list":{"0":"post-161382","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jobs","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-jobs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161382\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}