Jamie Rogers is a former semi-finalist in the BBC’s Masterchef: The Professionals, and the founder of an award-winning restaurant called Twenty Seven, located in the south Devon town of Kingsbridge. As it reopened for business after the recent lockdown, a handful of staff handed in their notice. As he told me last week, he then began to explore what was happening in his part of the economy, and was confronted with huge changes: “Jobs that were worth £10 an hour last year are suddenly paying double that.”
Brexit is part of the story. “A lot of international people have gone home – a lot of people are telling me that,” he said. So too is a shift among British-born workers. “I bumped into someone the other day who was working in Tesco. He used to be a head chef. He said, ‘I’m happy where I am now.’ He’s seen that he doesn’t have to work a 60- or 70-hour week, and he’s still probably making the same money.”
Rogers has now taken a bold approach to pulling in managerial staff, offering a £1,000 bonus if successful applicants can guarantee they will stick with him through the summer. He has also put up his hourly rates for middle-ranking jobs. The worst seems to be over, although he is still looking for a restaurant manager.
What has happened in his corner of the south-west is a small aspect of one of the early summer’s biggest stories: a global labour shortage. The US Chamber of Commerce is warning of a crisis affecting businesses “across every industry, in every state”. Angst is spreading about a lack of workers in Germany’s hospitality sector, and there are comparable issues in other countries such as Norway, Australia and Singapore.
Meanwhile, despite unemployment at 1.6 million, the UK is experiencing its own labour problems, partly caused by the fact that 1.3 million foreign nationals have left the country in the last year. As consumer demand surges, hospitality businesses don’t have the staff to keep pace, and shortages are also mounting in construction, road haulage, food processing and fruit and vegetable picking.
Restrictions on travel within Britain due to Covid are part of the explanation – but Brexit and the ever-more hostile approach to immigration by Priti Patel’s Home Office are also factors, as suggested by what Rogers has heard in south Devon. In that context, the recent spectacle of the Brexiter founder of the Wetherspoons pub chain, Tim Martin, moaning about his sector’s recruitment headaches and demanding “some sort of preferential visa system for EU workers” was grimly hilarious – – though as I know from bitter experience, time spent in his pubs rarely assists one’s powers of coherence and consistency.
Beyond the UK, as well as Covid rules and border closures, blame for labour shortages is also being placed on wage subsidy schemes such as furlough, increased unemployment benefits…
Read More: A shortage of workers is driving up wages: are we entering a new economic