Jobs vacancies and no people to fill them?

[Meoir Shee]

Some fundamental problems here, #1 being the demand for housing is far outstripping supply, prices of purchase and rent are rising at a serious rate and pricing many people out of the market and away from the Island.  #2, the wider cost of living on top of housing is far higher than the UK, especially food and travel off Island.  It is my understanding that staff turnover at Secondary Schools is as high as ever and many roles remain unfilled in the medium term, many youngsters come over, do a year or two, take the golden handshake and leave.  They simply cannot afford to live here.  I know of several people in this position, there is simply no long term strategy to resolve.  I assume it is the same in healthcare.  This results in a constant churn, which is expensive to the state but doesn’t actually resolve any of the problems, hence constant vacancies without anyone to really fill them, certainly not locally.  KPMG are offering 18 year olds 18.5k, possibly rising to 43k within 3 years, depending on exam progress.  PWC have announced their predominantly 9% pay rise.  Expect a future with few firemen, police officers, nurses, teachers or expect those industries to be dominated by short term, transient labour from the UK/Ireland with little to no investment in the place, driving up the cost of rentals.  These problems are not solely constrained to the public sector, the private sector faces similar issues but has a little more wage flexibility to resolve but this only kicks the problem down the road, higher wages, more demand for housing, higher housing costs, harder to recruit off Island and so on.

[slinkydevil]

PT Sandwich Artist - Shoprite-Port Erin 

https://services.gov.im/job-search/viewjob?Id=176234

[ellanvannin2010]

Perhaps we need some sort of surtax on people over say 55 moving here to help pay for their healthcare etc.

Plus maybe a surtax on multiple house/residential property ownership or purchase or income therefrom?.

[finlo]

Don't you just know the powers that be's answer will be thousands more civil servants!

[Yibble]

Whilst not a pensioner myself, I can't help but feel there are some lazy stereotypes in play here.

It's surely a bit simplistic to view all pensioners (or over 55s) as being a burden on the state. Many will have substantial incomes, be taxpaying and be spending in the local economy, rather than clogging up the hospital. They're also not requiring the state to educate their children, not clogging the road into Douglas during the rush hour and maybe spending their Grey Pounds in shops, cafés, restaurants etc. at times when there will be little or no trade coming in from most of those of working age*

Some of the posters on here seem to have an almost Maoist view of who the state should and shouldn't allow to be here. Be careful what you wish for.

(*aside from the old gits who still insist on hitting the supermarket at peak Sat / Sun time. Maoists, you can shoot them 😉 )

 

Edited June 29, 2022 by Yibble

[Newsdesk]

37 minutes ago, Meoir Shee said:

KPMG are offering 18 year olds 18.5k, possibly rising to 43k within 3 years, depending on exam progress.  PWC have announced their predominantly 9% pay rise.  Expect a future with few firemen, police officers, nurses, teachers or expect those industries to be dominated by short term, transient labour from the UK/Ireland with little to no investment in the place, driving up the cost of rentals.  

To be honest anyone with a finance degree joining KPMG at 21 isn't taking any job off a teacher or a fireman. They are different career paths totally. They'll also be working much more hours than a school teacher over those early years years when they're doing 60 hours a week audit work and if it all goes well over the first 20 years at some stage they might be asked to take a loan out for many hundreds of thousands of pounds to buy themselves into the partnership. There is no direct comparison at all. This public sector victimhood is embarrassing to be honest. If you don't like what you're paid get a better job. But don't start drawing up false comparisons to justify ridiculous wage demands. Many people are struggling to pay bills even in the private sector.  

[craggy_steve]

6 minutes ago, Yibble said:

Whilst not a pensioner myself, I can't help but feel there are some lazy stereotypes in play here.

It's surely a bit simplistic to view all pensioners (or over 55s) as being a burden on the state. Many will have substantial incomes, be taxpaying and be spending in the local economy, rather than clogging up the hospital. They're also not requiring the state to educate their children, not clogging the road into Douglas during the rush hour and maybe spending their Grey Pounds in shops, cafés, restaurants etc. at times when there will be little or no trade coming in from most of those of working age*

Some of the posters on here seem to have an almost Maoist view of who the state should and shouldn't allow to be here. Be careful what you wish for.

(*aside from the old gits who still insist on hitting the supermarket at peak Sat / Sun time. Maoists, you can shoot them 😉 )

 

Problem is not pensioners / retirees per se, but the disproportionate immigration of them compared with immigration of workers. I am retired, albeit a tad early, and very conscious that retirement massively reduced my tax conribution - no employers or employees NI for a start    IoMG has modest corporation tax reciepts, which puts more emphasis on employee taxation in order to meet the cost of seemingly ever-increasing gov't spending.

[Yibble]

1 minute ago, craggy_steve said:

in order to meet the cost of seemingly ever-increasing gov't spending.

Indeed. So maybe before we all start turning on each other, banning the old / the young / the poor, focus should be on that problem.

And hopefully rising interest rates will soon kick a bit of sense back into the housing market.

[Newsdesk]

6 hours ago, Youaintseenme said:

Absolutely.

I am sick of teachers, firepersons etc whining that other people are earning much more than them.

Mick Lynch is the patron saint of unionised victimhood. Lets maybe remember that unlike the heavily state subsidized rail network millions of people in the private sector had their businesses and their jobs shut down by government over the pandemic. Few of them moaned about how bad they'd been shat on. Now its all over out come the taxpayer funded scroungers asking for even more money on top of all the money they got paid when everyone else was on reduced hours or furlough. 

Edited June 30, 2022 by Newsdesk

[0bserver]

Housing is an issue and the market isn't going to fix itself and I'm losing confidence in Chris Thomas having any idea what to do.

Direct provision by Government could be the answer. What's the rough net cost to throw up a 2 bed house?  Government could set aside £10m as seed money and build on one of its land bank sites. Possibly Jurby Airfield or the Ayres would be good. 

[0bserver]

34 minutes ago, Yibble said:

Whilst not a pensioner myself, I can't help but feel there are some lazy stereotypes in play here.

It's surely a bit simplistic to view all pensioners (or over 55s) as being a burden on the state. Many will have substantial incomes, be taxpaying and be spending in the local economy, rather than clogging up the hospital. They're also not requiring the state to educate their children, not clogging the road into Douglas during the rush hour and maybe spending their Grey Pounds in shops, cafés, restaurants etc. at times when there will be little or no trade coming in from most of those of working age*

Some of the posters on here seem to have an almost Maoist view of who the state should and shouldn't allow to be here. Be careful what you wish for.

(*aside from the old gits who still insist on hitting the supermarket at peak Sat / Sun time. Maoists, you can shoot them 😉 )

 

Well the current model isn't working. 

While they have substantial incomes that's also the problem - they buy up the housing stock with cash, that creates problems in itself when you have cash buyers snapping up properties that first time buyers may be trying yo get a mortgage for. 

While it's nice that they have a few cakes and a cup of coffee in town, they're not generating income tax or national insurance. 

As far as retirees go, our island is full and overcrowded. As far as working age folk - we're open for business and we need them.

[A fool and his money.....]

39 minutes ago, Youaintseenme said:

Who is paying for all that with a skills shortage that is in danger of making businesses leave and so reducing our tax take and throwing us even more into a population that is heavy with retired people?

A 30k median wage and 300k house could also apply to huge part of the UK. We need more skilled people shipping in pronto or the economy will simply fold as businesses can’t operate here effectively.  Lots are already relying on off island contractors and outsourcing work they won’t continue for do that for ever.

Real cash incentives for businesses to relocate skilled people here is what is needed.  In fact it was needed five years ago when we still had a work permit system that was stifling growth.

The thing with skills is they need to be learned. Many other countries (the UK included) realise this and heavily subsidise training in areas with shortages. We don't, we throw money at people who've been trained by another government to persuade them to come an live here.

Not only is this immoral and discriminatory, the census clearly shows, it simply doesn't work.

[SpunkCookie]

1 hour ago, Newsdesk said:

Mick Lynch is the patron saint of public sector victimhood. Lets maybe remember that millions of people in the private sector had their businesses and their jobs shut down by government over the pandemic. Few of them moaned about how bad they'd been shat on. Now its all over out come the taxpayer funded scroungers asking for even more money on top of all the money they got paid when everyone else was on reduced hours or furlough. 

They’re not tax payer funded scrounges that Lynch is fighting for. Yes he’s spoken about teachers and nurses during his speeches. But he’s only representing rail workers, the railways are private in UK, not Government run. Those rail workers worked during the pandemic to keep the transport system going for key workers. He’s not just fighting for a wage rise, but also a guarantee there’ll be no compulsory redundancies and drop in safety standards for public using the rail system. Considering the rail companies made record profits, even during the pandemic, Lynch’s argument is bang on. Why should the top brass earn more whilst the front line workers get less? 

[Newsdesk]

5 hours ago, SpunkCookie said:

Considering the rail companies made record profits, even during the pandemic, Lynch’s argument is bang on. Why should the top brass earn more whilst the front line workers get less? 

That is literally nonsense. The official pandemic figures for the UK rail network are linked below. The UK rail operators got nearly £17Billion in taxpayers money last year to keep them afloat otherwise they’d have all gone bust. 

https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/media/2036/rail-industry-finance-uk-statistical-release-2020-21.pdf

A huge number of the operators are now having to re-finance due to pandemic loses and changes in consumer patterns. Not least the fact that huge numbers of workers in the south aren’t buying season tickets anymore as they’re WFH leaving big funding issues. The only people picking up the tab for this greed is the taxpayer. Never mind reality defying pay rises all round!

Meanwhile 300,000 airport workers were thrown out of their jobs to fend for themselves over the pandemic. But nobody seems to give a toss about them and in fact the entire UK media slags them off daily for airport delays when they’ve mostly been treated like absolute crap being thrown out of jobs and then re-deployed on the same crappy wages after a year or more on Covid support. It’s a shame there’s no noisy gobshite like Lynch sticking up for them.

Edited June 30, 2022 by Newsdesk

[Annoymouse]

11 hours ago, A fool and his money..... said:

The thing with skills is they need to be learned. Many other countries (the UK included) realise this and heavily subsidise training in areas with shortages. We don't, we throw money at people who've been trained by another government to persuade them to come an live here.

Not only is this immoral and discriminatory, the census clearly shows, it simply doesn't work.

Thats exactly it, just have a look at how many positions there are for qualified trades as an example and then see how many there are for trainee or apprenticeship roles.

The apprenticeship scheme is also a joke, you need to find a work placement before you can join the course, having been in that position in the past it’s near on impossible, businesses can’t work on maybes, either someone is going to be on the course or they aren’t, not registering your interest which just wastes everyone’s time.