Motor trade ‘a job Brits don’t want to do’
12 June 2024
The motor industry is up with hospitality and social care as the sectors with the most job vacancies, according to ONS data. It is listed on what used to be called a ‘shortage occupation list’, but which has now been renamed ‘immigration salary list’.
While job vacancies have fallen from a record high of more than 1.3m in the middle of 2022, today’s number of 898,000 is still higher than the 796,000 open positions before the pandemic in March 2020.
There are also 1.5 million people unemployed in the UK, representing around 4.3% of the working age population. The focus is now on trying to coax back into work those classified as inactive – those not in work or seeking work.
To solve ongoing workforce challenges, many businesses have been employing foreign-born workers – they now make up 19% of the UK workforce, double the 9% in 2004. “About 90% of job growth in the last 20 years has been among people who weren’t born in the UK,” says the Resolution Foundation.