People are coming out of retirement due to cost-of-living crisis A sustained upswing in the cost of living is forcing hundreds of thousands of retirees across Britain to reconsider a return to the workplace. According to a poll of 2,000 people, all at least 66 years old, 6 percent are likely to seek employment in the coming month to top up their pension pot or help pay the bills, they told …
Maybe the oldies can teach the youngsters a thing or two about attitude, reliability & responsibility. It sometimes seems that these are no longer important if you still live with your parents. Not all, obviously, but too many.
"Why did you not do/finish $task when you said you would?"
"CBA" comes the reply.....
"CBA" comes the reply.....
Very true. I was staying in a no-frills hotel a month or so ago, and one morning there was no cooked breakfast available. The less-than-impressed receptionist said that the breakfast chef simply hadn't shown up and when they phoned him he just said he wasn't up to it, which she (indiscreetly) suggested meant he was hungover. Firing him wasn't an option, since there's such a shortage of available staff that they'd then have no breakfasts for weeks. No doubt he'll continue with that CBA behaviour until they do find a replacement, at which point they'll get rid of him and he'll undoubtedly find another desperate establishment to hire him, so he has no incentive to develop more professional behaviour.
And with the cost of gas and 'leccy shooting up, hospitality are seeing massive increase in costs too. Not to mention the number of people no longer wanting to go into that industry after being laid off for so long, coupled with the difficulty of getting in foreign workers. Quadrupole whammy in that industry.
It might be somewhere for "unretirement" if looking for part-time, choose your own hours work :-)))
If not, there's always fruit picking :-)
Hmm, Brexit is bad because we can't exploit foreign low-wage labour? Interesting position.
For your information, exactly the same situation prevails in the EU as well. For example, restaurants and other businesses in France can't get staff either, even though their unemployment rate is almost twice that of the UK. This is not a Brexit issue.
A lot of people in a lot of countries thought about if their job was really for them in the pandemic, and for many it wasn't.
However the UK removing itself from the single market does not help fill unfilled jobs. You say it's not a Brexit issue, but hospitality says it's a Brexit issue: LMDDGTFY. Also the other famous example: LMDDGTFY again.
Also, you appear to have a rather low opinion of EU citizens. They didn't come to the UK to be exploited, they came to work just like any British citizen (who wants to). They couldn't be exploited in the same way as non-EU citizens could, and after Brexit it's obvious the UK offers less to them than before.
Brexit is a wonderful excuse for every problem, it's replaced "it's the computer's fault" for all kinds of stuff but that doesn't make it true. If every European country is suffering from the same problems then only the hard of thinking would actually believe it was down to Brexit.
Most EU citizens working in the UK could apply for settled status, many did. The hotel in question was in N.Ireland, so suffers less from that problem anyway. The simple fact is that after the pandemic, lots of people have re-evaluated their lives and no longer want to do that sort of work.
Only the hard of thinking would think it's just as easy for the UK to fill job positions after Brexit than before Brexit.
EU citizens resident in NI still need either settled status or a visa, there's no difference from the rest of the UK.
If an EU citizen wanted to come to the UK now, they would have to apply for a visa. No such thing as settled status for EU citizens applying for residency post-Brexit.
Well, except for those EU citizens from the RoI.
Of course there's no "settled status" for people arriving post-Brexit, since it's defined as people who were settled before Brexit. Anyone arriving now can apply for a visa or residence permit, just like those from outside the EU. Remember the days before the EEC, when most of the pubs in London seemed to be staffed by Ozzie and Kiwi gap year students? Wasn't a problem.
What on earth makes you think that an EU citizen with residency in RoI can work in NI?
In fact the British government is even considering making EU citizens, both non-resident and resident in RoI, apply before crossing the border which is simply unworkable given the nature of NI's border. Imagine being a family from RoI with one EU partner or child crossing the border for a pint of milk because it's where the shop is in that village or town - it's absurd.
Also, what makes you think that an EU citizen can work in the UK with a Youth Mobility Scheme visa as an Australian on their gap year would. No, an EU citizen will be on a Skilled Worker visa with a minimum salary of £26,500 and B1 English with the EU citizen paying the NHS charge and their employer sponsoring them through the visa process. Also it is impossible for bar staff (occupation code 9274) to work in the UK on this visa as it's not on the Skilled Worker list.
There is literally nothing right with your post. Impressive.
What on earth makes you think that an EU citizen with residency in RoI can work in NI?
Nothing at all, which is why I said no such thing. A citizen of Ireland is a citizen of an EU country, and such citizens can freely live and work in NI. Your blanket statement that "If an EU citizen wanted to come to the UK now, they would have to apply for a visa." Is false, since Irish citizens don't need one.
As for the British government is even considering making EU citizens, both non-resident and resident in RoI, apply before crossing the border, this is the logical result of the EU's long-planned Schengen ETIAS system. Like the US ESTA, it will require all people entering the Schengen zone to do an electronic pre-authorization before arriving at the border. It was always going to be problematic, since not all EU countries are in Schengen and this could contravene EU rules on equal treatment for citizens of EU countries, perhaps why it's been kicking around for years without being implemented.
If it does happen, it's not unreasonable that the UK would impose a similar pre-authorization requirement on EU citizens entering the UK. Most likely it would apply to Schengen countries, and not to the RoI, so my guess is that the journalist who wrote that article has just jumped to conclusions.
Even today, the NI/RoI border rules have inconsistencies. UK and Irish citizens can cross it without passports. Technically a visitor from a third country (such as the US) cannot do so without a passport check, but how could a Belfastman or Dubliner prove that they don't need a passport, except by showing one?!
Also, what makes you think that an EU citizen can work in the UK with a Youth Mobility Scheme visa as an Australian on their gap year would. No, an EU citizen will be on a Skilled Worker visa
That's an apples and oranges comparison. You can't reasonably compare the requirements for short-term visas with those for long-term skilled work. There are many types of visa, anyone in the UK as a student can work for 20 hours a week anyway, for example.
What's unclear about it? If the Schengen group brings in rules requiring travellers from outside to pre-authorize (which has been planned since at least 2016) it should come as no surprise that those affected non-Schengen countries will do the same in reverse.
So that's a "no they didn't talk to Ireland" and "yes the UK is going it alone" then.
But carry on harking back to how things were pre 1971 and bluffing your way through the real problems that Brexit has caused, it's working out so well for you.
Nothing at all, which is why I said no such thing. A citizen of Ireland is a citizen of an EU country, and such citizens can freely live and work in NI. Your blanket statement that "If an EU citizen wanted to come to the UK now, they would have to apply for a visa." Is false, since Irish citizens don't need one.
Obviously Irish citizens can work anywhere in the UK, but EU citizens can't unless they get a visa. For some reason I assumed you were talking about EU citizens working in NI as I thought that as you were confused about the single market, you got other things completely wrong too.
As for the British government is even considering making EU citizens, both non-resident and resident in RoI, apply before crossing the border, this is the logical result of the EU's long-planned Schengen ETIAS system.
In that case what should happen is the whole CTA should get similar e-visa scheme to avoid this problem, but this is just the UK forging on ahead without talking to any other CTA member.
Even today, the NI/RoI border rules have inconsistencies. UK and Irish citizens can cross it without passports. Technically a visitor from a third country (such as the US) cannot do so without a passport check, but how could a Belfastman or Dubliner prove that they don't need a passport, except by showing one?!
Yes, this is a well known problem and it shows once again that the CTA isn't really a true border-free area or a true equivalent to the single market.
That's an apples and oranges comparison. You can't reasonably compare the requirements for short-term visas with those for long-term skilled work. There are many types of visa, anyone in the UK as a student can work for 20 hours a week anyway, for example.
Yet it's the skilled worker visa that would apply for the EU citizen in this case. University students studying in Belfast who may be allowed to work 20 hour weeks aren't quite what the hospitality industry is looking for. Youth mobility visas only apply to a handful of countries. Seasonal worker visas are only for six months working in horticulture.
Well, except for those EU citizens from the RoI.
You mean someone with an Irish passport? Remember brexit has destroyed many of the benefits we had when we were an EU member state. We were 'EU citizens' that gave us rights to live and work across Europe. The Single Market allowed our businesses to access resources across the continent, and sell there too with much reduced hassle.
Yes we have our own immigration policy now, but being outside the Single Market means we have lost lots of other benefits too, such as recognition of our qualifications. Of course brexiters only see this from the shallow English point of view. They don't care about how it works internationally because, well, we are Ingerland and I only go there for one or two weeks a year. The benefit of the Single Market was flexibility. We could offer work to a larger pool of workers. Our USP was we only speak English, and with many young people wanting to learn English we were an attractive location, and someone could come for a season, or perhaps stay here one or two years before going back home having strengthened their language skills. No longer.
Did brexiters think because we have got rid of the cheap competition our wages will increase? But if that happens so will costs, and thus so will prices. The polls have said that the reason many people voted for brexit was about reducing immigration, yet we are now, in fact increasing it. How did that happen? Of course, we've taken back control, so that's ok then.
FFS: we are an ageing society and NEED more young people. The fertility rate in the UK is well below the replacement rate of 2.1 -- indeed that is the case across much of the world. So we are going to need more people coming from abroad to fill the jobs of those who are retiring.
Let me simply end with: BREXIT IS STUPID and must be reversed.
We were 'EU citizens'
No such thing. We were "citizens of EU member countries".
that gave us rights to live and work across Europe.
And a massive 1.2% of the UK population took advantage of those work rights. More than twice as many work in non-EU countries.
The Single Market allowed our businesses to access resources across the continent, and sell there too with much reduced hassle.
Very true, and it is one of the great regrets of the change from EEC to EU that Brexit became our only viable option, and so cost us that. If the politicians hadn't forced a working trading community to become a failing, centrally-planned fiscal and political union, we'd all have been better off.
being outside the Single Market means we have lost lots of other benefits too, such as recognition of our qualifications
False, the EU didn't guarantee any general recognition of qualifications, and leaving it hasn't changed that.
Our USP was we only speak English
ROFLMAO, that's our USP?! Anyway, speak for yourself, some of us speak other languages as well.
with many young people wanting to learn English we were an attractive location, and someone could come for a season, or perhaps stay here one or two years before going back home having strengthened their language skills. No longer.
Still possible, especially for students, and not that difficult otherwise. OK, now you have to ask permission before simply turning up, hardly an onerous request. I did it, in pre-EU days.
we are an ageing society and NEED more young people. The fertility rate in the UK is well below the replacement rate of 2.1 -- indeed that is the case across much of the world.
Good. The world is seriously overcrowded, and if nature doesn't reduce the population the inevitable catastophe/war/pandemic will. Better that we do it gradually.
So we are going to need more people coming from abroad to fill the jobs of those who are retiring.
Following your logical that will apply to every country, so it's a zero-sum game. Jobs change, automation replaces some, motivated people will always find work.
must be reversed.
Not going to happen, and I suspect you'd see riots in the streets & Boris back in No. 10 if you tried.
The days of the EU are numbered, we can just hope that some other sort of looser "European commonwealth" can replace it, to give back some of the advantages without the disadvantages.
So let's get down to the nub of the matter:
I did it, in pre-EU days.
The rest of the continent has moved on, even though many people in the UK haven't.
Hell, Ireland has a constitution and clear rules for referenda. If the UK had those then we wouldn't be in half the mess we're currently in at the moment.
Also:
False, the EU didn't guarantee any general recognition of qualifications, and leaving it hasn't changed that.
Unsurprisingly you're wrong, you just add a Hague seal to your diploma and it's recognised.
The rest of it, meh, just a rant.
Unsurprisingly you're wrong
No, I'm not, because unlike you I've actually lived and worked professionally in the EU. That rule only applies to a small subset of professional qualifications. As the text itself says "Other professionals still have to rely on standard procedures to have their qualifications recognised."
The rest of it, meh, just a rant.
Nice try. No answer, so just insults? How predictable.
Seriously? If you've had problems getting an IT degree or diploma recognised in the EU pre-Brexit then it's best you stick to the UK.
Of course regulated professions are more difficult to get recognised post-Brexit. The withdrawal agreement only contains a small subset of regulated professions and that only works for Britons who were already resident in an EU country. If it's not in the withdrawal agreement then post-Brexit Britons don't have that right.
The rest of your post is harking back to the past, bluffing, or has a slightly distasteful tinge of English exceptionalism. What did the French ever do to deserve you and Andrew Neil living out your retirement in their fair country? As I said... meh.
« Most EU citizens working in the UK could apply for settled status, many did. »
Many did, many I know, and it was a right ball ache.
Even now none of them have any tangible proof that they have it - they have to rely on « computer says yes » when they pass UK border control.
Wel, that's the civil service for you. I was in the opposite situation, a Brit settled in France for many years but with no interest in becoming a French citizen (friends who went that route reported it as being horribly slow and complex, with dossiers timing out even before they'd been reviewed).
To my great surprise my residence card was transferred into the settled version in a couple of months via one online application. The issue of proof is a little easier because the French are happy to carry identity papers, something that the British would not tolerate.
Physical proof of residency status helps assure rights. The EU citizens working in the UK who had to go through the settled status process had to gather up paperwork on the past five years of the life and even then may not have been accepted or given pre-settled status which meant fewer rights.
And now, post-Brexit, they still have no physical proof. When the Crapita-produced app doesn't work when they're opening a bank account or signing a contract or the software at the border flakes out on them just at the time they need proof, they're screwed.
There's no need to dress up incompetency running a residency database, cheaping out on the physical proof, and some EU citizens not having their residency rights recognised as some kind of noble aversion to not carrying papers, it looks silly. The British can tolerate a lot more than the French, just look at the current government.
Well, I don't need it (ROI citizenship as well as the UK), but my partner decided that French citizenship was the way to go (she was/is American). Some bureaucracy, but nothing more than others have reported in the UK. It went through quickly and smoothly.
I have friends who've been in France for 20+ years, and whose children are French citizens. When they applied for citizenship themselves they were required to supply various supporting documents which were no more than 1 year old. 16 months later their case reached the head of the processing queue at the Prefecture, where it was returned due to their documents being out of date. It took a further 6 months after resubmitting new ones to even reach the stage of an interview.
The British are stupid. Do you read the news?
There is even quiet talk now of 'reversing' brexit. They gave that brexit moron Steve Baker a job in Northern Ireland and now he says he's sorry. Funny that (not). How are they going to convince all those stupid people who voted for brexit that it was a gigantic mistake? Probably more lies from the DM.
COVID does though - at least from a left-pondian perspective. Low-paid employees dealing with large numbers of people, their exposure risk was incredibly high; add in minimal allowed, much less paid, time-off for recovery, and those who survived generally give back the respect and commitment they were shown. IE: None.
I used to do a lot of work with a US company with offices in France. The French government never considered that EU freedom of movement laws applied to them. Even before Brexit we were being told we could not supply non French contractors for work in France. This included German and Irish contractors not just ones from the UK. Hell they wouldn't even let people from the parent company in the US come and do their bit in France without jumping through a million hoops. The law was supposed to protect French jobs. The result was a big department was closed in France and moved to somewhere where it was legal to work in an international environment. Seasonal workers like fruit pickers might well have similar problems to IT contractors in France. They may been to jump through the hoops to become French workers before they can work there. Brexit might have made the French situation worse. One of the areas I used to go to in France had a lot of UK nationals working in bars and restaurants and these people may no longer be able to register as French workers.
The problem with post Covid workers in France is probably universal or Europe wide however. I was in Portugal a couple of months ago and the guys in the restaurants I've been going to for years were saying they couldn't get staff for love nor money.
"The problem with post Covid workers in France is probably universal or Europe wide however. I was in Portugal a couple of months ago and the guys in the restaurants I've been going to for years were saying they couldn't get staff for love nor money."
If this is as some friends and a family member told me (restaurant and hotel employees) this is mainly due to employers refusing to pay more than pre CoVid/pre-ukraine hysterics as well as the insecure situation how long the job will last as german government is hell bent on never ending the pandemic state and still plays around with the political redefinition of "vaccinated" status (4 jabs of the mRNA snake oil at the moment, real vaccines are not accepted for the status).
Take into account that giving tips is not really as ingrained in germany as in england so this expected "income" is quite likely to drop to around zero as even those who endure the panicdemic rituals to go to a restaurant will definitely not have as much money to spare as before the current situation(s).
So low pay plus politically enforced job insecurity plus the inflation due to the seppuku sanctions and here we are.
Isnt it astonishing that people dislike to take underpaid and insecure jobs ?
Instead of moaning about it here, how about you moan at the Tories of screwing up the economy for the last 12 years? An economy so messed up that those who deserve their retirement can't actually enjoy it properly, instead of having to seek employment to make ends meet.
I'm sorry but everyone is entitled to a job, irrespective of age unless you think age descrimination is the right way?
@Plest
"Instead of moaning about it here, how about you moan at the Tories of screwing up the economy for the last 12 years?"
Been going longer than 12 years.
"I'm sorry but everyone is entitled to a job, irrespective of age unless you think age descrimination is the right way?"
I agree with the sentiment but I would say that people earn their job. They are not entitled to work, they earn their job to trade their ability for something of value.
@AC
"Everyone has the right to employment, so they can support themselves as necessary."
So where can you walk into and demand to be given a paid job to support yourself? Even the basic trade of going up to someone and offering to help for a price is not a given. Nobody is owed employment just because they exist. That would preclude the ability to be fired (without being hired elsewhere).
"The person must have the ability to perform that job function adequately."
Every employment is a trade. As per the trade you must offer something they want in return for what they will offer that you want. That exists at the lowest levels as well as the higher levels.
In a pretty crushing example locally- a homeless guy would walk around the local supermarket carpark offering to take a persons trolley back to the bay as long as he could keep the pound coin. A good trade people seemed happy with. It was very unfortunate he was told he was not allowed to do so any more (not sure if it was the supermarket or a busybody clipboard git).
A pound per trolley hasn't got great career progression has it? And you can't buy a house on that either, especially now mortgages are at 6% (if you can get one).
So if working isn't a right and the person in question is in a hopeless position right at the bottom, then you must agree that it follows that some form of welfare state is required and also adult education to eventually help them into work (even though that may not happen).
I always knew you were a socialist at heart.
@Dan 55
"A pound per trolley hasn't got great career progression has it?"
I said job and employment but I dont think I said career? Instead of just begging he traded his time to get a little money.
"So if working isn't a right and the person in question is in a hopeless position right at the bottom, then you must agree that it follows that some form of welfare state is required"
It already exists. The welfare system already exists to support these people but some still choose to remain outside of it.
"I always knew you were a socialist at heart."
That you suggest we need a welfare state, which we have, and this is still a reality it would seem the socialist idea doesnt get there.
Instead of just begging he traded his time to get a little money.
It doesn't matter, it's not a living wage.
That you suggest we need a welfare state, which we have, and this is still a reality it would seem the socialist idea doesnt get there.
Do you believe the Tories are socialist?
The welfare state as it is today is not the same as the welfare state of 10 years ago.
Over 330,000 excess deaths in Great Britain linked to austerity, finds study
Note that this study was from 2012-2019, i.e. Before Covid.
@Dan 55
"It doesn't matter, it's not a living wage."
And? This started as me responding to someone that you are not entitled to a job, you earn your job. You seem to be running away a bit by talking about a living wage which has nothing to do with being paid what you earn.
"Do you believe the Tories are socialist?"
The tories had been shifting left since taking over. First in coalition and then facing of with actual socialist/communists which the tories tried to hoover up (and succeeded for a short time). They do seem to be moving back towards the right but considering some tories were so incensed at Boris moving slightly right they left for the lib dems they were obviously in the wrong party.
"The welfare state as it is today is not the same as the welfare state of 10 years ago."
It never is. The govs have even tried to 'fix' welfare a little with universal credit but the problem is the complication of eligibility before a simpler system could work.
"Over 330,000 excess deaths in Great Britain linked to austerity, finds study"
Oh damn thats a big problem. We never had austerity, spending wasnt reduced and instead under Cameron was above Browns! The austerity budget increased spending which is the opposite of austerity.
moan at the Tories of screwing up the economy for the last 12 years?
They didn't release COVID or invade Ukraine.
The real problem is that the mismanagement of the Bliar years has created a generation of entitled snowflakes who expect to have everything handed to them on a plate, and that it is someone else's fault if they don't get what they want. And, of course, government must always pay for it.
>The real problem is that the mismanagement of the Bliar years has created a generation of entitled snowflakes
I think we have accept it's the fault of those lazy Saxons.
The new Norman regime needs to be given some time for its innovative entrepreneurial policies to work.
Aren't they the same thing?
"The name derives from "hook" (as in angling for fish), in reference to the shape of the peninsula; Indo-European linguist Julius Pokorny derives it from Proto-Indo-European *h₂enk-, "bend" (see ankle).[4] Alternatively, the Angles may have been called such because they were a fishing people or were originally descended from such."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angles
Tosh. If your statement were true we would not have record low unemployment.
Blair introduced student fees and facilitated the property inflation bomb that were self certification mortgages, an idea borrowed from the US. That ended well, didn't it (see the crash of 2007).
Tory-lite is a widely used description for the Blair government, and with good reason.
Work being available at rate of pay reflective of effort IS a problem. Average housing prices are now 8-to-12 times salary. Remember when The default was 3* salary as what you could mortgage? Have you personally had to work on a terrible zero hours contract? I doubt it.
Those low paid care workers? What about them. Should they follow Tory advice and 'get a higher paid job'? And if so, who will do the necessary care work?
People rightly are demanding better, and the solutions to that are the redistribution of wealth. Cutting red tape and admin would also help : lots of lawyers and accountants, not so many coders and engineers. The last I checked, it's the latter that generate trade balance.
Starmer coming onto centre ground and the Tories lurching right pretty much means change is inevitable, but a bigger shift than that would be welcome.
"They didn't release COVID or invade Ukraine."
So you fell for the "not me" propaganda most political individuals abuse to avoid being held responsible for their poor performance with both ?
The amount of corruption, negating basic citizens rights and doing unspeakable harm both personally and economically is not "because of CoViD" but the direct result of someones individual decision.
Not "CoViD" is responsible but the individuals deciding the anusive nonsense we all had to endure.
Same with the conflict in the ukraine. Sanction seppuku was not decided by "putin" or "the invasion" but by political individuals in the USA, in the EU and not many more countries elsewhere.
Eu wise, thats not even a pyrrhic victory as the self destruction doesnt seem to lead to any of the proclaimed goals that were told to the citizens as to why commiting collective economical suicide is a great idea.
Please note that i will not mention any political parties, because the full responsibility for each and every destructive and false decision must stay with the individual who decided and no one (and nothing)else.
Maybe but it needs to be more than this.
When your whole society revolves around work and stigmatises and ostracises those that do not have a job, then what is answer ?
Get rid of them ?
Leave them in poverty to ‘teach them’ ?
Nobody decides where they are born or how capable they are.
The Middle Ages has tales about the village idiot who was unemployable but still looked after.
Sometimes progress doesn’t look like it is …
"The Middle Ages has tales about the village idiot who was unemployable but still looked after."
I wouldn't count on the middle ages having done everything in the stories. The village idiot could have managed to do basic manual labor, which is what a lot of other people were doing anyway. A lot of people at that time had no protections other than being able to ask family or friends for assistance, and I'm prepared to guess that a lot of people suffered badly from that. This is especially in contrast to developed countries today, where depending on why you're "unemployable", there are explicit programs designed to make sure that you don't just rely on family to get by. I don't have direct experience of these programs, and I won't pretend they're perfect, but compared to historical examples, they're much stronger.
"When your whole society revolves around work and stigmatises and ostracises those that do not have a job,"
It used to, but not any more. When I was young, sometime last century, if you were "on the dole" it was a matter of shame. Nowadays its a career choice for many.
@LybsterRoy
"When I was young, sometime last century, if you were "on the dole" it was a matter of shame. Nowadays its a career choice for many."
In a previous job of mine it was a matter of pride for one of the girls to quit the part time work and draw dole. In her eyes us idiots were working a rubbish job while she got money for nothing. Another got knocked up (either she didnt know the father or didnt matter) so she could get the free house and benefits, again same job.
In every period of human history, up until socialism reared it's ugly head, looking after life's unfortunates was seen as a duty of their family and close community. Socialism destroyed that by demanding that the state take control and then, inevitably, failing that duty. If we ever manage to rid ourselves of the socialists, that will hopefully be the case again.
Jobs are one of the twin poles around which British society revolves - the other one is house prices (house price increases are "good", unlike rises in the price of petrol, food or anything else which are definitely "bad". See the Daily Mail for confirmation).
Correction: If the value of the Dollar, Pound and Euro go down together relative to third world currencies, then blaming "international causes" is valid.
The pound going down in isolation makes it absolutely clear that it's the actions of our own Government at work.
Devaluing the pound to devalue debt and improve attractiveness of British Exports. The latter point I would concede is a valid option, but it is done at the expense of ALL other British assets. Are Jag/JCB/BMW Mini/other sales really going to make up the losses incurred by dumb policies? No, of course not.
Truss' policies are literally a page out of Robert Mugabe's book. It is not a good thing for (almost) everyone.
"I don't think it's possible for *all* currencies to go down"
No it is, value can just evaporate in the modern financial system. Right now we are seeing the value of the US dollar drop, and this is dragging down all the currencies that are pegged to the dollar. Whilst the dollar appears to be going up in value on charts when compared to other currencies this is just because the other currencies are falling faster then the dollar.
The value of a currency is measured in how many goods or services you can buy with it.
Inflation is the measure of how much value an individual unit of your currency is worth, (and you actually want some level of inflations to incentivise people to spend their money instead of saving it) but when inflation is higher then the rate of economic growth then that means you currency as a whole is losing value. Which is a situation we are seeing around the world.
It's not great news for anyone.
I'm in the south of england and infrastructure engineers with a laundry list of skills are being offered £20k-£30k. (outside London) I don't know where they're getting those figures from, but that's even less than the NHS and local government are paying.
Something is still seriously screwed with the IT jobs market and it's going to take a while to sort itself out, I reckon.
Truss is still negotiating an elusive trade deal with India. The latter are insisting on free movement for their nationals. Many other countries on Liam Fox's whistle-stop Brexit trade tour also have a surplus of educated nationals.
The Australians gave the UK the same trade deal as they had given the EU - except with the added provision to ease UK immigration for their nationals.
No idea why so many downvotes.
Boomers had DB pensions, cheap property, student grants, ample business opportunities. Yet they still need to turn up to work?
For a 21 yr old professional today, you have 50 grand of student debt if you are lucky; record property prices; terrible costs of living, rental and/or capex property prices, minimum wage not even remotely reflective of living cost, and a heavily saturated market where coming up with the next idea is increasingly impossible : because just about everything that can be invented and is practical already has been.
State pensions basically worthless and retirement age going up too.
It’s not hard to see why we demand something different. And those of us middle aged seeing these problems festering at the hands of tory boomers are so dammed pissed off.
An IT colleague retired at 60 as his wife needed long term care - and she died a few years later. He had worked for the company since leaving university in 1970. I suspect he is finding his surprisingly small DB pension getting tight - especially as the CPI linking is capped to a maximum of 3% inflation. No chance of him returning to the labour market given his deteriorating health.
A house as an asset is an illusion - except for those investing in several of them. For most people they are a home. Down-sizing in old age is defeated by the increasing nominal price gap for suitable properties - and life-savings have been rapidly depreciating for at least a decade.
They can't even leave their house as a home for an unrelated deserving young family - as the price inflation means HMRC want a larger inheritance cut requiring the house to be sold. Executor sales are often very quick as estate agents have BTL pals who snap up such properties below market price..
A few things, I am more Gen Jones - between boomer and X, DB pensions are fine providing the company does not collapse and you end up with around half of what you were expecting. I bought in 1991 and the mortgage was a little over half my take home pay, granted the actual sum was lower at 3x my gross pay, but by no means was it cheap.
Yes, I did get a partial student grant, but that was when quite a small proportion of school leavers went to university, the push to get 50% or more in higher education is what stopped that. The loans only have to be paid if you get a well enough paid job to do so and they time out eventually if you have not had a very well paid job to clear them.
I'd say the expansion of the internet and social meadia has made it much easier for people to create new businesses now, if you can reach a large enough audience it is amazing what kind of trivial rubbish they will buy. The lad that made a load of money selling car tax reminder discs for example, he reinvested in land, good on him. It is possible to find new things to sell all of the time, the ease of prototyping even physical goods given 3D printing and custom circuit board suppliers has never been better.
Yes, financially it can be tough for some of the younger generations, but many of the 30 - 40 year olds I work with have bought houses, have families and are doing OK and I don't work in a city pay rate business. Just look at the lifestyle we have now, a portable communications and information device in our pockets, the range of foods, activities and convenience equipment, the advances in medicine, the ease with which we can travel. The last twenty five years has been totally different from the twenty five previous to that in which we grew up and had to begin work in.
You want to go back to when there were two or three channels on the TV, pay phone up the road, a take away was fish and chips, the local library was the only place to find out about anything your parents or teachers did not know, cancer was a death sentence, cars needed fettling to start in winter and you never went very far without spares and tools, putting shillings in the gas and electricity meters, coal fires?
Life has never been that easy, just the difficulties and opportunities have changed and evolved over time. The younger generations should embrace and be proud of the modern world with all of the complex interconnectedness and awarness they are living in and creating. To me it is the science fiction I read in school come to life.
I am sure that some of this is down to the cost of living but we have had a crisis in filling vacancies for a few years now and that will also be encouraging people/
There are some caveats though:
Employers have no concept that older people are still useful.
There is the issue that you cannot get through basic HR screening because they filtered, often before humans are even involved.
Then we have the concept that experienced people are too qualified for a job when maybe all the retired person wants is a few hours at a lower skill level. They can still add huge amounts of value to a role.
This can be a challenge even before one retires, particularly in any IT (even remotely related) role.
There are exceptions but far too many employers just perceive that the older people (and that threshold is frighteningly low) are of no use to them.
Good luck to those seeking employment but a radical change is needed on the part of the employer.
Then we have the concept that experienced people are too qualified for a job when maybe all the retired person wants is a few hours at a lower skill level. They can still add huge amounts of value to a role.
I ran into this somewhat a dozen years ago, when I wanted to return to my original engineering discipline after fifteen years as a project manager - basically in search of more enjoyment, more challenge, less procedure, and (sadly but not unexpectedly) less pay. It took a lot of searching and eventually a temporary position a lot lower than my abilities before I was able to find something that I wanted to do and that someone wanted to pay me for - promoted on grounds of 'if we pay you *this* much will you stay please?'
There's a great opposition to someone in their fifties seeking an entry position in embedded engineering hardware and software and I assume it's the same anywhere.
Ten years later I retired to get out of the UK before the madness of brexit and settled in Europe; this year my old company sought me out for a couple of days a week working, which I'm happy to do (particularly given that the pound has been stupidly low against the Euro, and my pensions pay in pounds...)
I'll second this. I spent a couple of years away abroad and was lucky enough to find an IT job 'on the tools' when I came back. Straightforward hours, minimal stress and far more headspace for hobbies and private projects.
Sure it pays less and has zero prestige, but I'm on the glide path to early retirement and my long term health is taking priority over corporate headaches (tracking quarterly SLA's anyone?).
Well that ("glide path") is part of it, innit?
Your situation sounds grand, and I'm on a similar trajectory, thankfully. But it's contrary to what most corporations want -- they *want* us to scrape and scramble, and most importantly, to need the position they're offering, at whatever wage.
If we can take it or leave it then they haven't got the control over us they want. They can't dump whatever crap duty on us and expect us to merely be thankful we still have the job. They can't get away with laying off 10% of the department and demanding everyone else "pick up the slack".
Depending on what/where you read, there's a lot of corporations shrinking and even doing cutdowns and layoffs recently. I'm sure some of it is true, and some even warranted, e.g. due to some companies over-expanding and over-hiring the last few years. Poor management practices again, basically.
But with full tinfoil hat in place, I suspect some of the press and media around that topic is fed by those same corporations, who often still seem to have job openings btw, as a way to stoke a little fear in and reassert control over the potential workforce.
During the pandemic lots of people in boring jobs were laid off or furloughed, and quite enjoyed the freedom. That was helped by the billions handed-out by government to pay their expenses. They had little interest in returning to work, so a "great resignation" was predictable, until the bills started coming in and they realized that they again needed the money they used to earn.
Not a UK-only problem, although it's easier to 'un-retire' here than it is in some other countries.
It would be interesting to know what sectors they are returning to. Hospitality and the care business are struggling to recruit staff, as industries they're competing with companies looking for drivers, which is less stressful.
What you said doesn't really contradict what they said. Whatever the reasons for choosing to resign, whether that was not liking the job because it was boring or because they felt mistreated, they chose to retire early and had the ability to do so for the moment. The pandemic had a lot of benefits for people who wanted to leave their job, from assistance to those who were unemployed to an easy market to switch into another job. Those advantages won't last forever, and as retirees have already seen, not having a job can be more expensive than they planned.
I'm not sure the reasons people chose to resign are that relevant. People have the right to leave a job even if there's no mistreatment and they just don't like it. While there were so many companies looking for people, I know several who took advantage to find a different job, and I encourage it. That may not last much longer, though, and the amount of money the employer pays may become more important as prices rise.
Hey it's not only Charlie who gets a new job at 73. I have been selected for a new post by 'Michael Page UK & Ireland'. It must be a pretty exciting international job 'cos the email was posted from a hotspot in Libya and all I have to do is click on this site in Chile. What could possibly go wro....
Even though I am well past the state retirement age.
I walked into my current $EMPLOYER at the age of 66 and they are only too happy for a number of reasons.
1. Some of the stuff we work with is over 40 years old and designed accordingly. Discrete transistor circuits. Stripline inductors (a piece of metal on a PCB). Small scale integration logic (think quad gates in a single package) providing quite complex logic (so boolean algebra is a must).The list goes on.
2. Lots of RF and Radar, hardly mainstream subjects in colleges and university. I have been in that world, on and off, for over 50 years. Contrary to common belief, we have had functionality that is now commonly rendered using a digital setup (microcontrollers, microprocessors, DACs, ADCs and so forth) for several decades primarily designed in analogue circuits. The fact the new versions are done using newer techniques does not change the fundamentals of what those things are.
3. Designing to what you can get. Particularly true for precision circuits such as test equipment.
4. Small microcontrollers (mainly 8051 based) with the code in assembly language. Precision timed loops (so cycle counting was necessary to get the correct timing - that is how it was done).
4. I know the electronics ecosystem (be that contract PCB assemblers, vendors, reps, FAEs and so forth); if I need some assistance, parts, development kits (you name it) I know who to ask knowing I have a good chance of getting it.
That said, I stay on top of all the new stuff (which is not always easy but if you don't you lose the edge).
I am not preventing someone younger getting a job (as many seem to think is the case for us older types) simply because in the vast majority of cases they simply cannot do the job(s) I do.
YMMV.
I was in the same situation as you before I eventually retired. I would have been happy to mentor people, to teach them the magic just as I was when I was younger but in reality my employer was just kicking the can down the road.
There will come a point where your time is worth more than their money.
I hear you about old technology. For many, especially younger engineers, if its not 'the latest' then its of no interest but the reality is that there's existing product lines that need to be maintained and enhanced and all too often 'the latest' merely provides the tools to hide sloppy engineering. (I do thing that 8051 assembler has passed its prime though......it was a very useful part back then but there are so many superior and cheaper alternatives, not to mention 'C' compilers to tidy up the coding.)
Several youngsters seemed to have the possible aptitude to eventually do my technical trouble-shooting job. They all quickly decided that they preferred the rewards of the management stream.
To get the management's visibility they did "quick fixes"to problems that would eventually come back to bite someone - usually me as the long-stop. Eventually I allowed them to think they were outflanking me - and then I gracefully retired.
According to my doctor there were several "silent" health problems that were the result of a career of long, irregular hours with stress, poor sleep and mealtimes. Now I pill pop and carry on doing electronics and coding only for my own little projects.
....I for one am looking forward to my retirement job. I can't wait to become one of those old men that work at a big box DIY store and is the only on who knows where to find the splagefluxicator brackets or whatever.
Occasionally just for giggles when someone asks me for something I will wander up and down several aisles muttering to myself and then just stop in the middle of the store and piss my pants. Not because of dementia or incontinence but because it will be funny as hell.
It's better than sitting at home staring at daytime TV....
The absorbent "man nappy pants" are useful. When my bladder started to get unpredictable I bought some as a precaution when away from reliable toilet locations for longer than 30 minutes. Tried one out as an experiment - and it worked ok. Never had to use one in anger though.
My GP and hospital did some diagnostic work and applied their usual pill solutions. No real effect - except the Erectile Dysfunction from the anti-androgen pills to stop my prostate enlarging.
I've often thought it might be entertaining to work part-time at a hardware store or the like and explain things to novice DIYers. I'm sure it would be a rather mixed bag, but showing someone an inexpensive specialty tool that makes a job much easier1 or explaining a problem-solving technique could be good fun.
That said, I'm in no hurry to retire from my current job.
1The traditional example for this is the basin wrench, but for a decade or two now most faucet fittings in the US have used hand-tightened nuts with compression washers, making the basin wrench unnecessary. But there are others – screw extractors, say. Or even the humble coping saw.
Some people retire - then find they don't know how to use the time. Many others say "I don't know how I ever fitted work into my busy daily schedule".
If you do your own projects using the same skills as you did at work - there is the bonus that there is no middle management trying to make you cut corners.
I don't know what world they are living in but in the UK it is impossible to retain a reasonably senior tech job after about 50. If you are not fussy you may be able to get something, but recruitment is massively skewed towards the young and cheap (especially based in India etc).
Working until full pension age is a joke.
Just look at the shenanigans at IBM, and they have always been more responsible than most.
I'm an academic at a large UK university - based about fifty miles north of London - and after you get to fifty you basically become invisible. It some ways it's depressing, but it also make a much easier life, be we oldies can just relax and watch the young and promotion-hungry knock themselves.
At the backend of 2021 (58 at the time) it became clear I needed to get out of my current position for my own (mainly mental) health.
I started looking around and much to my surprise had an offer from a large company with a head office local to me that actually valued real experience. They specifically wanted someone who had dealt with all the issues, understood the fixes etc. After I accepted and we were chatting the head of IT basically said he was sick of techie-wannabees filling their CVs with bull. All sorts of funky experience but a real understanding of sod all.
These people have the answers to everything but the solutions to nothing. Sadly most IT manglement and HR drones are taken in by all the smart talk because it is all they understand. Therefore in most cases you end up in the stupid cycle of incompetence and the few oldies that have been round the block a few times are seen as inflexible and unwilling to change when they say some "new" idea will not work. That is precisely what experience is for, the issue is that it really scary how few value genuine experience.
Let's compare apples with apples... UK median is £25,332 ($28,078).
For someone living in the UK this seems like a great figure. But -- its an illusion.
First of all, there's a huge wage disparity in the labor market. Median just means the point where high and low meet, it doesn't say anything about distribution. For 'real' jobs figure $15 an hour (and that's only because there's been a legislative push in states like California to set the floor there -- the US minimum wage is half that).
Second, in many parts of the country (like where I live) you need a household income in the $200K and up range to buy in. Renting a room -- not an apartment -- costs around $1000 a month. There is a continual push to provide lower cost housing but its chronically scarce and usually comes with strings attached. Why so expensive? Its where the jobs are.
Yes, in many parts of the US purchasing even a small house on a $54K annual income would be financial suicide. And in many places AirBnB has encouraged landlords to convert long-term rentals into short-term ones, driving long-term rental prices up.
Medical costs in the US are also high and fall mostly on individuals. My wife and I have what's considered "good" dental insurance, for example, which covered $600 of a $1400 procedure for my wife recently. And you don't want to be in a traumatic accident in these parts; if the local hospital doesn't have room or feels you need some type of care they can't provide, they'll ship you off to the nearest alternative – and since there's no longer a ground ambulance service which will take you, that means a helicopter ride that will cost you, personally, tens of thousands of dollars.
Fuel prices here are relatively low, but lack of public transit means many people do a lot of driving.
Education in the US is, of course, wildly expensive in the general case.
Median salary really isn't a useful point of comparison, or benchmark for what's required to achieve a "middle-class lifestyle", however that might be defined.
Rather, there is a perennial skills shortage at the offered job conditions in the IT industry. This could be alleviated by employers at either the supply side (by hiring people who can then be trained into the position’s hard-to-fill skills) or the demand side (by increasing the offered salary/benefits/perquisites to attract people who already have the sought-after skill set). The laissez-faire approach of waiting for perfect candidates to fall into employers’ laps doesn’t seem to be particularly effective, judging from the perennial description of the skills shortage being perennial.
You can train IT technical people from near scratch - but they are likely to hanker after the benefits of a management career stream.
If a company establishes incentives that make one career stream of greater benefit than another, then it shouldn’t be surprising if some people follow the stream with the greater benefits. Personally, I’ve never hankered after becoming a manager, and I suspect that that would be true of many who have spent their careers on the technical side.
The Government's* actions of 2020 and 2021 are coming due in 2022 and beyond. All the stimulus money was borrowed from the future. The only way out is through inflation devaluing everyone's wealth. We still have the same amount of money on-hand, it just buys a lot less. As a result retirees have less to live on than they had planned for, and back to work they go.
* = We are the Government, and this is what we collectively wanted.
61 yo former techie here. Actually, I've only had one job in my field, after 5 years at Ohio State. I worked for Digital Equipment for a few short years, installing and maintaining VAXes back in DEC's heyday in the late 80s. I loved the hardware but hated the customers and the corporate environment.
Since then I've done a ton of things, but 9 years ago, on a lark, I took a job driving a taxi. Turns out it was my dream job! I work longer hours than at any other job I've ever had, but it doesn't feel like it. Last month, after a couple of years of indecision, the owner of the company decided to finally retire, and sold me the company. Yeah, Uber and Lyft have taken a tiny slice of our business, but we offer a premium service in big black Lincoln Town Cars, the extended wheelbase version, and we're the only decent, reliable taxi business in an 80 mile radius.
My retirement plan is to never retire. I love my work, I earn a decent living, and I have fun all the time. As much as I love watching TV, there's no way in hell I want to spend the rest of my life doing that. As long as I can get out of bed and drive safely, I'm going to keep working and having fun.
My primary choice of personal entertainment is books rather than television, but I agree about work. If I retired completely, I'd have to spend even more of my time working on the house, and probably finding volunteering work, than I do now. I couldn't be happy sitting idle.
I do plenty of non-work things – spend time with family and friends, hike in the mountains, read those aforementioned books – and my wife and I occasionally take a vacation by ourselves where we spend a few days idling about. But I need to spend a part of most days getting something done to be happy.
This post has been deleted by its author
A couple of years before I retired my middle-management boss did a pay survey of my skills in the wider IT market. He was shocked to find the answer was double what they were paying me. However - HR then told him that he could only make a once-off 10% raise for me.
Didn't really bother me - it meant that I could still be an Enfant TerribleElder Statesman in insisting that the job was done properly.
I'm actually back in work at 64 - having been gently sliding towards retirement with my own company (which just died during lockdowns as I wasn't prepared to go out to peoples' houses)
However, its 3 days a week, processing data. So a bit of SQL and a lot of Excel! It was just a job that needed doing...
I wonder if many people would want just a 3 day a week job?
Maybe you boomers that bought houses at 4x your salary whilst doing low skills jobs should understand motivating people with a carrot on a stick went out of fashion 20 years ago.
Giving someone 3% rises a year whilst inflation is at 10+% isn't going to motivate them either. And we know we know "I had 15% interest rates at one point!"
Mortages are now less affordable for those few months with mortage rates at ~6% when you account for salary stagnation.
all the best on your golf round this afternoon.
The boomers are out in force on this thread. They can't be reasoned with of course; too many vested interests. Some nutter up above thinks the Pound was fine following the disastrous mini-budget. You could not make up how much they choose to behave like ostriches with heads in the sand at this stuff.
Don't worry, when the NHS is torn apart from under them for carrying on to vote the same direction, they will finish themselves off more quickly. So long as we remember to put it back together again quickly enough and before too much damage is done.
There's a reason the Tory vote share change and death rate are synonymous.
I think the reason why there is inertia in getting older people back into work is the tax angle. Some people are "force-fed" their pensions when they get to a specified age, reducing their personal allowance (PA). I think it was in Investors Chronicle an article which mentioned the "pay-back" time if you deferred your state pension and it seemed quite long, so I think a lot of retirees might not be keen to defer their pension. Then there's others too broke to want to defer.
I think a lot of older people would be tempted to do even lower-paid jobs (to keep themselves active), but have the feeling of working for virtually nothing due to having used up their PA (see above). If gov really want to do something about this*, I think they should introduce a facility to suspend the PA ceiling for jobs in certain instances (hard to fill, minimum wage jobs) for people over a certain age.
*If my understanding is correct, the BoE effectively bailed out the pension industry the other day. So much for Pension Funds supposedly being run in a highly prudent manner.
Yes, it all depends on your personal situation.
I was lucky in that I'd been paying into a private pension for many years, even when it was a struggle and it was hard to imagine ever being old enough to actually claim it. The folly of youth is to imagine you're not old enough to worry about retirement.
Claiming the state pension (deferring by 1 year increased the value of the monthly payment by 5%), will be a nice little "pay rise" and should give access to the Cost of Living bonuses announced for this year.
I am, but it's not a huge amount and I'm not sure if it'll be there if we have another surprise "mini budget" as we've had recently ;).
EIther way, it is what it is and I might not need it anyway if things go further south than they already have in the world :p.
Considering the news of the last 12 hours that the BoE is going to suspend it's bond-buying in a couple of days, and the FTSE is collapsing left and right along with pension funds; do the "unbelievers" now have the evidence of the utter incompetence of Kwasikaze's policies?
Or do they still have heads in sand?
"Considering the news of the last 12 hours that the BoE is going to suspend it's bond-buying in a couple of days, and the FTSE is collapsing left and right along with pension funds; do the "unbelievers" now have the evidence of the utter incompetence of Kwasikaze's policies?"
While there are questions over what the policies actually are and how good they will be this is the result of the wonderful policies of pissing money up the wall for at least a couple of decades. Interest rates on the floor and governments spending in desperate hope to get inflation and now they have it without much room to manoeuvre.
What is worse is some people thing the gov should spend more!
@Binraider
"Spend on the right stuff would go a long way."
Like what? And the problem is spending incontinence. Too much government spending and too little focus on growth. As soon as Truss signalled a move to trying to promote growth (agree with her plans or not) there was panic. So much is currently reliant on government throwing money in all directions and 14 years of QE and lowering interest rates.
Recently I was listening to a podcast about the current inflation and how it has been the aim since 2008 to stimulate it, and how they need to be careful what they wish for.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
