Consciousness of Sheep
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Like everything else that was shut down in 2020 and 2021, Britain’s job market was broken. As businesses attempted to reopen, they were faced with a massive labour shortage. Lorry drivers, for example, had all but disappeared. Skilled construction workers were also in short supply. But the biggest shortages were in traditionally low-paid sectors such as social care, retail, and hospitality.
One consequence of this “vacancy crisis,” was that it fed into a misguided neoliberal analysis of the sharp rises in prices following lockdown. A proportion of the price increases were “monetary inflation” – the result of people spending the excess currency creation used to fund business support and workers’ furlough payments during lockdown. But the majority of the price rises were simply the manifestation of a global economy attempting to incorporate and overcome broken supply chains. Nevertheless, economists, journalists, and politicians began regurgitating the myths of the 1970s, and especially the fabled “wage-price spiral” in which higher wages would force prices to rise even further.
In those sectors of the economy where skilled workers were in short supply, wages did rise. But the majority of vacancies were – and are – in low-skilled sectors where pay has remained depressed. According to Office for National Statistics data, 814,000 of the total 932,000 current vacancies are in traditionally low-paid services; 401,000 in retail, hospitality and social care. Nor is that low-pay merely a choice by business owners. Rather, it is the result of decades of neoliberal austerity which has forced retail, hospitality, and social care businesses to be among the leanest and most cost-conscious in the economy. Prior to the pandemic, this had the benefit (although not for the workers) of keeping those services cheap – a core purpose of neoliberalism. But it also meant that, faced by labour shortages for the first time in decades, these businesses simply couldn’t afford higher pay because they were already cut to the bone.
As always, there were plenty of scapegoats. Greedy trade union scripts from the 1970s were dusted off and regurgitated by the establishment media – focussing on the handful of excessive pay demands rather than the mass of workers whose pay has been stagnant since the 2008 crash. Too many people working from home was the political class’s favourite – overlooking the fact that this was as much to do with businesses saving on rent. Brexit, with tiresome inevitability, was also blamed by a media class which has never forgiven the British people for not voting as they were told. And while the loss of European workers undoubtedly worsened the problem, the crisis runs much deeper.
The barrel-scraping non-solution that the political class finally alighted on was to make the lives of sick and disabled people even harder in the perverse expectation that this group could fill vacancies traditionally taken by fit youngsters. Indeed, most of the vacancies are in roles which, prior to the lockdowns, would have been taken by students to supplement their loans, or by graduates as a first step on the employment ladder. So that the idea that, say, an immobile sixty-year-old with several limiting co-morbidities is going to find work in a hotel, bar, or restaurant is fanciful at best. And trying to get them to fill a care home vacancy isn’t going to work, because they’ll be mistaken for one of the residents.
Humour aside, there is a serious point here. Officially at least, the average age of the UK population is 40.7 years. According to the Centre for Ageing Better, four in ten people are now over-50, and the number will continue to rise for several decades because of the falling birth rate… although I would dispute the predicted rise in life expectancy, which was already beginning to fall even before the pandemic, and will continue to do so as the economy continues to decline.
Obviously enough, the majority of the sick and disabled who the political class somehow believes can be badgered into serving coffee are also over-represented among the over-50s… that’s just howe life is, particularly in a civilisation which spends a fortune prolonging the lives of those who would have died younger in an earlier age. Nearly a quarter of British men and just over a quarter of women aged 60-70 have a limiting sickness or disability, with 10.5 percent of men and 12 percent of women severely limited. This group will make employment data even worse in the coming years because of an earlier decision to raise the retirement age from 65 to 68 years.
The real workforce crisis, however, is at the opposite end of the age range. After the last of the Baby-boomers arrived in the early-1960s, there was a slump in the birth rate through the 1970s. This reversed in the 1980s as the Millennials were born. And in the years prior to the pandemic, the Millennials provided a large, young, and energetic workforce. Today though, the Millennials are in middle age. They occupy senior and better-paid roles than those where vacancies are high. And crucially, just like the Boomers, the Millennials were followed by another – bigger – slump in the birth rate. And it is the people who weren’t born around the turn of the century who would have otherwise filled the post-lockdown vacancies:
In part, government attempts to coerce the over-50s into roles more suited to younger and fitter workers are already failing, since a large part of the over-50s have simply disappeared from the employment figures entirely – they are neither in work nor claiming out of work benefits. Rather, as an unforeseen consequence of governments since 1979 cutting the state pension to encourage the uptake of private pensions, a large number of the UK’s over-50s chose to take their pensions early during lockdown and have settled for a lower than expected standard of living.
The fact that they have felt able to do so, points to another demographic timebomb which is currently masked by the Millennials. I pointed out elsewhere, that one of the key reasons why the UK economy was able to recover from the depression of the early-1980s was that the Boomers were at the height of their productive capacity. And by the 1990s – just as the debt-based boom was gathering pace – the Boomers were reaching the high point of earnings too. So that, throughout the period, the boomers also acted as a massive consumer base, fuelling a growing discretionary economy.
To some extent, the Millennials – who are now in or nearing their 40s – have been doing the same thing… holding up a post-2008 economy which would have been far worse without their spending. But things begin to change in middle age. Spending shifts away from the high-paced recreational activities of the teens and early-20s, toward more domestic pursuits. And although middle aged people tend to have more money – particularly if they have repaid their mortgage – their spending tends to drop as they move toward retirement. And once in retirement, spending tends to fall further, simply because at that age we will have already made most of our expensive purchases.
As the Millennials pass into middle age and begin to see the spectre of retirement and old age looming ever closer, their spending will fall just as the Boomers’ spending fell two decades before. But as that happens, so the absence of people because of the falling birth rate will guarantee a continued economic decline, simply because the UK will lack the discretionary consumer base to turn things around.
In short, today’s vacancies point to a serious “everything crisis” tomorrow. Immigration might mitigate this – although it will have social costs. But since birth rates are collapsing around the world, this is no more than a temporary fix. Certainly your deranged anti-Brexit social media friend is wrong in expecting workers from the EU to solve the problem, because EU birth rates are dropping as fast as the UKs. And most likely, once those arriving from further afield realise that the streets of London are more likely covered in raw sewage than the promised gold, even that source of workers/consumers is likely to dry up.
The irony, of course, is that most of us – including those who claim to be in charge – have been focused on over-population, and had hoped that a falling population would mitigate the coming collapse. Instead, it would appear that having fewer people merely changes the nature of the collapse… not its inevitability.
As you made it to the end…
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