My understanding is we have lost 1.2 million people from the labour market since brexit - not solely as a result of brexit of course and that we now have more vacancies than job seekers and this is impacting the foundation economy ie the ability of health social care retail hospitality leisure etc to recruit more so than the higher level skill jobs although there is a sense that these are in short supply as well
Therefore we don't have enough workforce to go around and as a result the numbers of unpaid carers will grow for example as we can't provide state health and social care services which means they will need to rescue their participation in work to supplement care provided by the state
Part of the answer is to recruit from abroad but this market has shrunk since brexit and even though some of those foundation economy roles are on the shortage occcupationt list they don't meet the salary threshold to enter the country
We need reform in light of brexit and the pandemic to have a proportionate strategy to supply the country with a workforce it needs but we also need to value the lower paid roles more as a society and this may mean we either pay more tax or we redirect what we do pay to different areas to make these jobs more attractive and go beyond the real living wage that they are currently paid in some key worker sectors
Do I have confidence that we have leadership within the UK that gets it do I feck as in the main they are all self serving nose in the trough types of w33kers that are only concerned with personal wealth and their self preservation