Business recovery and the recruitment challenge

Emerging from lockdown, Professor Frank Peck looks at the scale of the staffing issues facing businesses across the county. As the UK economy has gradually emerged from lockdown during 2021, business owners have had to face the challenges of adjusting to the post-pandemic economic environment. For many, a key aspect of this adjustment concerns the new conditions in the labour market. There has been much comment in the media about labour shortages and recruitment difficulties. One sign of this difficulty can be seen in national trends in job vacancies which have reached record levels in recent months (National Statistics Vacancies and jobs in the UK, August 2021). In May to July 2021, official data shows that an estimated 953,000 job vacancies were recorded, the highest level since records began in 2001. In that same quarter, it is reported that there were 3.2 vacancies for every 100 employee jobs, also a record high.