the jobs situation is a bit odd, I know they have raised the minimum wage more rapidly than at any time before, but there may be an element of too little too late, it’s still not caught up with the cost of living and being available to work, I’d include housing and transportation to and from work, these costs still power away from the decent yet insufficient rise in minimum wage,
losing a chunk of the Underground network would just make commuting in London more awkward and probably more expensive and time consuming,
also the location of these vacancies, I strongly suspect they are clustered in certain hotspots, not evenly distributed across the country, I wonder if someone drilled down into the numbers if they’d find it’s hard to get people to fill relatively low paid jobs in relatively expensive places to live,
the other motif of employment during the neo-liberal era has been a tendency to poach or headhunt experienced and skilled staff to avoid training, employers want the staff but not to invest in staff,
the NHS has been poaching staff from abroad for a long time, Brexit + covid may well have messed this right up, these skills require lengthy training, also hospitals have been centralised into big district hospitals again putting the vacancies in one place making people have to commute which is expensive privately and public transport is becoming more erratic,
we keep seeing our “mutton-headed” politicians trying to cope with situations by shifting the responsibility to adapt onto the employees instead of adapting society to enable people to work, every employee finds their job entails more jumping through hoops, longer, more complicated and expensive commuting, greater compromises in their choice of accomodation,
mass transit is all about getting large numbers of people quickly, easily and cheaply into a congested area where the jobs are, this helps business,
affordable housing near large employers of non professional staff would also help business,
support for and streamlining of training for required skill sets including a reduction of the cost burden to individuals entering training would ecourage prospective candidates,
I mulled over retraining but it would be entirely at my own expense with no clear sign of a job at the end, places to retrain are clustered in the middle of inaccessable distant areas, relocation is prohibitively expensive, it looks expensive, awkward, time consuming just on the travel front and no clear view of an objective at the end.
it’s as if the politicians are just sitting back and expecting individuals to spontaneously reorder society, they have no plan, they only introduce more obstacles.
it’s been like this for a long time but earlier the rewards to the individual exceeded the costs, now it just seems more trouble than it’s worth.