![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Suzanne-Caldwell-1-1024x683.jpg\")
Suzanne Caldwell<\/p>\nSuzanne Caldwell<\/p>\n
Employers are still finding it difficult to find staff despite rising unemployment figures across the country.<\/p>\n
Employers are battling against sky-high employment costs and widespread skills shortages.<\/p>\n
The stark reality for businesses trying to recruit is that it\u2019s still far harder than it should be.<\/p>\n
Unless more is done to boost access to skills, contain employment costs and get more people working, economic growth will remain stunted.<\/p>\n
On top of the challenges of Employers\u2019 National Insurance, earnings growth year on year in Cumbria continues to be above the UK average, at 6.2% compared to 5.5%.<\/p>\n
The skills crisis also has far-reaching implications for government policy.<\/p>\n
While ministers have pledged to get the nation building again, with recruitment difficulties in construction spiking to 85%, delays to getting vital infrastructure in place are inevitable.<\/p>\n
And with 72% of businesses saying costs are putting pressure on them to raise prices, the spectre of higher inflation continues to loom.<\/p>\n
The situation isn\u2019t improving, and there is a growing urgency to find solutions.<\/p>\n
The new technical excellence colleges will help increase the supply of some vital skills. But much more needs to be done and the coming budget presents a golden opportunity to unlock potential through targeted investment and incentives.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a huge talent pool in the UK that remains untapped. Nationally three million people are missing from the workplace due to long-term sickness.<\/p>\n
The Government should use the tax system to help people stay in \u2013 or quickly return to \u2013 employment when they experience ill health.<\/p>\n
Tax breaks for health services that businesses provide to their workforce are an obvious solution, to protect people\u2019s livelihoods and keep skills in the workforce.<\/p>\n
And for those struggling to get into work, we need a wage subsidy scheme, similar to Kickstart, to unlock employment opportunities for young people with long-term health conditions.<\/p>\n
The British Chambers of Commerce Insight Unit\u2019s latest Quarterly Recruitment Outlook found that just over half of businesses surveyed (54%) said they had attempted to recruit in the last three months.<\/p>\n
Of those trying to hire staff, 75% said they experienced difficulties, up slightly from the previous quarter (73%).<\/p>\n
The research for Q3 was carried out between August 18 and September 15, with more than 4,600 businesses across the UK (91% of which are SMEs) responding.<\/p>\n
The hiring landscape continues to show wide variations across different sectors, with 85% of businesses in construction reporting recruitment difficulties.<\/p>\n
Other services was the next highest at 78%, while transport, hospitality and professional services were all at 74%.<\/p>\n
Most businesses did not increase the size of their workforce in Q3, with 61% saying staffing levels remained the same.<\/p>\n
Less than a quarter (22%) did increase staff numbers, down slightly from 23% in Q2. Looking forward, most do not plan to hire extra staff, with 63% expecting their workforce to remain the same size. Meanwhile 12% expect to lose staff with 25% expecting to increase.<\/p>\n
Labour costs remain the biggest cost pressure for businesses, cited by 72% of respondents. But again, there are big sectoral variations with that pressure highest in hospitality (80%) and lowest in retail (66%).<\/p>\n
Faced with those rising costs, training investment remains relatively static, with 24% of businesses saying they increased investment in Q3, compared with 23% in Q2. Most (57%) did not spend any more on training in the last three months, while 19% reduced investment, similar to Q2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Suzanne Caldwell Employers are still finding it difficult to find staff despite rising unemployment figures across the country.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":100429,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[114,184,85,46],"class_list":["post-100428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100428\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}