According to the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales the skills shortage is still raging strong, but that shouldn’t stop clever contractors.
In fact, if you’re a freelancer or an umbrella company contractor, you’re likely in a very good position right now, thanks to the persistence of the skills shortage in the UK. The ICAEW says that, basted on its figures, around 39 per cent of business owners are busy biting their fingernails to the quick over whether they’ll be able to actually find enough staff to support their plans to expand and grow.
You know what this means, don’t you? Well if you’ve been playing along at home you know that it’s the contractor community to the rescue! That’s right, our stalwart interim workers are just waiting in the wings to swoop down and take up lucrative freelancing contracts with companies desperate for the staff to keep themselves afloat just long enough to find a permanent worker to exploit. I mean employ. It’s a good time to be a contract worker in this economy indeed.
In fact, there are some markets that are in even worse need than others according to the ICAEW. 46 per cent of the firms in the production sector, for instance, said they couldn’t find any permanent workers that were qualified enough to meet their needs; this paves the way for some significant paydays for any contractor with the skills to match to the business sector.
Of course, this whole skills shortage thing isn’t exactly news. It’s been going on for at least all of 2014 and probably a bit longer than that, and so far the freelancing community has been backing up British businesses quite well as they flail about looking for full-time employes that can do better than finding their arses with both hands in the dark. Now, so-called industry experts have been saying the sky is falling in that eventually the number of freelancers will run out when it comes to the demands of British industry and that the whole thign will collapse under its own weight. Now, to that I say bollocks. It’s obviously not happened yet after years and it’s not bloody likely to happen any time soon. So stop worrying about it and just enjoy yourself for once.
