A LACK of affordable accommodation and Islanders opting for early retirement are among the issues which have created major ‘alarm bells’ for organisations looking to recruit staff, a leading business expert has said.
Kevin Keen, who has previously been brought in by several struggling companies to help balance the books, believes the situation will be a challenging one for the new government to tackle after the forthcoming election.
And recruitment expert and former States Deputy James Baker said that the Island was facing a staffing crisis as labour shortages had created a situation where some workers were ‘able to hold employers to ransom’.
The number of current job vacancies listed on gov.je was 871 yesterday, while the latest figures from Statistics Jersey showed that 720 Islanders were actively seeking work on 31 March, including 270 people who had been seeking work for more than a year.
Mr Keen said: ‘When you see the range of jobs that are available, across all sectors, it’s quite a surprise and I think rings alarm bells for the Island.’
The former chief executive of Jersey Post said that filling all the vacancies would involve trying to attract applicants to move to the Island, but that this process could be hampered by a lack of affordable options for accommodation.
He added that the pool of available labour had diminished as a result of many Islanders opting to take early retirement during the Covid pandemic.
‘I’d like to see strategies from government aimed at getting some of these people back into employment, even if they don’t return to full-time work,’ he said.
Members of the new government face a ‘massive challenge’ after being sworn into ministerial roles in the aftermath of the election on 22 June, Mr Keen added.
He said: ‘It’s a tricky one for politicians in trying to square the problems: people want to work fewer hours and retire early; they also want a thriving economy, but there’s also opposition in some quarters to population increases.’
Mr Keen also said the situation was creating pressures for existing staff, with many proprietors feeling obliged to work longer hours. Efforts to bring in staff to some sectors, such as the recruits from Antigua and Barbuda in the hospitality sector, had made a positive difference, he explained, but there were also vacancies in areas such as healthcare and education which were harder to fill.
Mr Baker, who served as Assistant Economic Development Minister during a three-year stint in the States Assembly from 2011 to 2014 and subsequently founded recruitment group Grafters, said that the inflationary effect of labour shortages was especially pronounced in some sectors, including construction, engineering and transport.
He said: ‘There are huge inflationary pressures and it has paralysed the job market in some areas – workers are able to hold employers to ransom.
‘The term “crisis” is massively overused and you read about some form of so-called crisis every other day, but this is a crisis – businesses can’t operate and it’s not good for consumers either with prices going up.’
Mr Baker also said some venues had been forced to close or operate reduced hours as a result of the recruitment situation, which he said had been exacerbated by some workers returning to their native countries in Europe as a result of the weaker pound.
