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7:07 AM 15th July 2021
business

ONS Labour Market Figures

 
Image by Mohamed Hassan
Image by Mohamed Hassan
Commenting on the ONS Labour Market statistics for July 2021 published today,Matthew Percival, CBI Director for People and Skills, said: “Vacancies exceeding pre-Covid levels is a further sign of demand returning and employers creating jobs.

“Yet businesses’ ability to meet this demand, and support the recovery, is being challenged by staff shortages. As COVID cases rise, firms are facing the double difficulty of hiring workers and more employees self-isolating.

“Short-term, aligning planned changes to self-isolation to the reopening and including a test and release mechanism will help. To ease acute shortages the government should also immediately update its shortage occupation lists to include jobs ranging from butchers and bricklayers to welders.

“Longer term, firms must continue to strengthen inclusion while investing in skills and automation. And government can help by ensuring that the qualifications it funds include those in short supply.”

Also commenting BCC Head of Economics, Suren Thiru, said: “The significant rise in payroll employment suggests that UK jobs market continued to improve as the economy gradually reopened.

“Surging demand for labour amid the economy unlocking, the rapid vaccine rollout and continued government support helped drive higher payroll employment in June, despite the delay to the end of the roadmap.

“The rise in vacancies confirms the ongoing struggle to hire staff. The recruitment difficulties faced by firms go well beyond temporary bottlenecks and with many facing an increasing skills gap, staff shortages may drag on any recovery.

“The July reopening will further boost labour demand. However, the UK jobs market is moving into a more turbulent period with unemployment likely to drift moderately higher in the near term as the furlough scheme winds down and those who stopped looking for work during covid return as restrictions end.

“More needs to be done to ensure businesses have access to skills when these can’t be recruited locally, including access to rapid and agile training and re-skilling opportunities for adults in the workforce and a more flexible immigration system which allows firms to access the high and low skilled workers they need.”