Demand for workers remains high as staffing shortages grow

There was a total of 1.66 million active job adverts in the UK at the end of August, with HGV drivers and nurses in the highest demand. The number of new job adverts being posted each week has remained high since early June and in the period from 23-29 August there were 193,000 new job postings in the UK.

An analysis of the data found the areas that worker shortages are among the most acute include HGV drivers, nurses, programmers and software development professionals, care workers and home carers and primary and nursery education teaching professionals.

There are many factors that have combined to cause this crisis. Some of it is short term, with many businesses hiring at once now that the economy has reopened, causing a bottleneck. However, there have been staff shortages in sectors like driving, IT and healthcare for many years. A combination of Brexit and COVID-19 has caused those to get worse and created new shortages in other sectors.

The main challenge that people coming off furlough who are looking for a new role may face is that available roles may be in different sectors to where they had worked before.  While starting salaries for permanent staff are increasing at a record rate, employers should avoid focusing only on salaries and consider things like their workplace’s facilities, parental leave and flexible working policies, pensions or holiday entitlement. Employers often underestimate the importance of these kind of benefits, which are very important to workers. Good employment relations – really listening to employees – matters more than ever.