Is the recession over? The number of available job opportunities has hit a miraculous five-year high, according to the Reed Job Index.
It might be too soon to truly close the book on the long, dark teatime of the soul that the 2008 credit crunch and resultant economic downturn wrought upon the UK, but things may be looking up, if the Reed Job Index can be believed. According to the newest data, October saw some 165,000 job vacancies advertised on the Reed site alone, representing a massive 17 per cent jump year on year and drawing attention to how it seems that the job market has more or less exploded so far in 2013.
The index, which began keeping track of job figures back in 2009, found that every single region of the UK actually underwent an annual increase for the first time ever. Scotland was the big winner with a massive 48 per cent increase, most likely due to all that North Sea oil and gas activity that’s been lighting up the north recently, bringing with it lucrative and important jobs for permanent employees and contract workers alike.
This is unabashedly good news, this fantastic increase in the number of vacancies out there, isn’t it? I mean all those unemployed Brits have plenty of possible jobs to choose from in order to get back to work and start making some money again… but somehow industry experts think it might not be as spectacular as people think.
You see the problem is that there just aren’t enough skilled and qualified workers to go around to fill all these positions, which is why there are so many vacant ones right now. The skills shortage is currently wreaking havoc with the UK economy, even though freelancers and umbrella company contractors are scrambling and working their hardest to make themselves available to all these firms that need experienced workers in any number of fields.
So that’s the bad news: these promising job opportunity figures might not indicate that companies are looking to expand because of a burgeoning economy but instead showcase the terrible lack of new graduates with the skills needed to make it in the employment sector. Here’s hoping something can be done about this miserable predicament we’ve found ourselves in; perhaps a new focus on teaching practical skills and providing on-the-job learning apprenticeships might solve this problem, but no decisive action has been yet taken. Let’s get off our arses and solve this one, shall we?
