In the post-pandemic era, it was difficult for pubs to find staff to serve beer.
Workers were wary of working in an industry closed due to Covid, and competition for staff was tough.
>However, while the pub chain may have looked overseas in the past, Brexit now means it's much harder to attract the kind of workers that would have staffed the bar in years past. Many jobs do not meet the salary or skill thresholds under the new regime.
There are nearly 130,000 job openings in the hospitality industry, and authorities are begging officials to add them to a list of jobs in short supply, which could lower the threshold for accepting migrants.
However, the government may be reluctant to loosen immigration restrictions even further ahead of an election for fear of potentially politically toxic repercussions.
“In every election in the past 25 years, Britons have voted for parties promising a reduction in migration,” Carl Williams tells the Center for Policy Research, a think tank closely linked to the Conservative Party.
2207 A surge in out-of-EU migration
Rishi Sunak will be well aware of this fact .
Despite a new skills-based post-Brexit immigration system that was supposed to give the UK more control over migrant flows, the number of migrants has risen sharply.
The latest ONS estimate net migration to the UK was 606,000 people in 2022, driven primarily by people from outside the EU as migration out of the bloc is declining.
The surge is partly a sign of a strong UK job market. Employment is at an all-time high and unemployment is close to historic lows. With more than 1 million vacancies, this means that businesses must increasingly look for workers abroad to fuel their growth.
In the three months to March, 1.98 million non-EU foreigners worked in the country, up 292,000 from last year, to a new record high. In contrast, the UK still employs about 135,000 fewer EU citizens than before the pandemic.
Many non-EU nationals coming to the UK are highly qualified. Nearly 3,000 visas were issued in the first quarter of this year for IT professionals in science, engineering, and technology, more than 9,700 for healthcare workers, 1,200 for engineers, and 800 for management and business analyst consultants.
Smaller groups included more than 400 butchers and nearly as many teachers, just over 100 architects, surveyors, and project managers , as well as 79 airline pilots.
2207 post-pandemic labor market
In addition to more highly skilled migrants, total net migration also includes dependents, as well as students and their dependents, who can take low-paying jobs that are otherwise impossible to get on a visa.
Similarly, a significant number of Ukrainians came to the UK seeking asylum after the start of the war there.
Last week some construction workers, including masons, roofers and carpenters, were added to the Occupations in Short List following requests from industry, paving the way for more foreign workers in the UK. these industries must come to the UK.
Whatever the composition of the migrant flows, the high absolute number remains a problem for the Tory party. Attention to this issue will only increase after two crushing defeats in last week's by-elections.
A group of MPs called the New Conservatives put forward proposals to curb the influx, warning that “without swift action to control migration, the Conservative Party will further undermine the confidence of the hundreds of thousands of voters who voted for the party in 2019.”
The New Conservatives argue that companies need to stop relying on migrants and instead do more to bring back those classified as “inactive” to work ”, noting that employment is beneficial for those who are in poor health.
“More than 700,000 people on sick pay want to work with the support of the social security system,” MPs said. “It is morally right and cost-effective to help them get back to work.”
2207 EU immigration
Their proposals include reducing the migration of care workers, which will deal a serious blow to the sector.
Herein lies the catch: the prime minister must take the narrow path, reducing the number of migrants without hurting the economy.
With the domestic job market seemingly full, Sunak and Jeremy Hunt have no choice but to take in more migrant workers for the moment if they want to deliver on the Prime Minister's promise to reopen the economy by the end of the year.
The key to changing this reality will be to convince older people who quit their jobs during the pandemic to return, as well as address chronically high infection rates.
Professor Brian Bell, chairman of the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC), which makes recommendations on which jobs should be included on the list of jobs in short supply, says: “All the data tells us that people over 50 have left the labor market more than others during the pandemic, so it is clear that there is a pool of workers from whom, if you put in the effort, you can get a job.”
At JD Wetherspoon, a bunch of pubs are specifically aimed at this group. Roughly one in ten of the pub chain's employees is now over 50, and recruiting manager Michelle Crook called the hiring campaign “brilliant.”
The Department of Labor and Pensions is planning a new hospitality boot camp scheme where job seekers will receive basic training in food hygiene and preparation, among other things, to ease the path to hospitality work.
2207 labor shortage
There are 8.65 million people of working age who are not working and not looking for work. That's down from last year's high of 9 million, but still more than 280,000 above pre-pandemic levels. The biggest jump has been an increase in the number of chronically ill people by more than 400,000.
Efforts are underway to halt the rise in chronic diseases.
The Treasury has also announced occupational health measures to try to help those who are sick stay in work.
Professor Bell points out that the job shortage list itself is not intended to impede the development of workers already in the UK.
In order to get more positions on the list, the construction sector had to come up with projections of how many workers it would need in five years and its plan to train staff to do those jobs. In this case, migration is allowed only as a temporary stopgap to fill a gap in training.
“If you come back three or four years later and say, ‘We haven’t been able to train anyone,’ we won’t leave you on the list of jobs in short supply,” says Prof Bell.
The failure to be tough in the past has given “employers no incentive to do the right thing in terms of educating British workers, improving pay and working conditions. We want to strike a balance between helping and making sure that employers don't use it as a crutch, so they don't have to bother making any changes they need.”
Downing Street will hope these changes come sooner rather than later, allowing it to start reducing the number of migrants.
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