Research completed by the British Beer and Pub association have announced that up to 52 pubs per week are closing in the UK. Local pubs were the most vulnerable as most communities have been affected by the downturn in the economy.
The closure of 53,466 pubs have added to the amount unemployed and left 24,000 people out of work. A number of breweries have been offering support to the tenants of the pubs to help put a stop to the amount of pubs closing down.
The automotive group Nissan have announced today that they will be recruiting for about 350 jobs in the North East plant in Wearside. The £200 million pound investment will be towards building batteries for new electric cars.
Nissan are yet to confirm whether the new jobs will be taken up by the 1,200 jobs that were cut earier this year.
As part of the project, 750 charging points would be installed across the region and a training centre specialising in the manufacture and maintenance of low-carbon vehicles would be set up.
Nissan’s £200m investment will be spread over five years and the new plant, which will make lithium-ion batteries, will also create and secure additional jobs in the related supply chain.
The number of people in the UK unemployed rose to 2.3 million over the last quarter, the highest since November 1996.
The number of people that found themselves out of work since the 3 months up to April had rose by 232,000, compared to the previous quarter 226 million. This means that the rate of unemployment has now risen to just short of 7%.
The estimated figure is s ill set to reach 3 million by the middle of 2010. Does this mean that the UK employment market will start to look a little brighter after this time? How long will it take the repair the damage that had been made.
According to recent research done by the CIPD, employees are more satisfied with their jobs now than they were just 3 years ago and it seems that staff are counting their blessings during the economic downturn.
Research was carried out by 3,000 employees who took part in a satisfaction survey. The results showed that the number of satisfied employees exceeded the number of dissatisfied employees by a huge 46%.
Although it appears that more employees are happy in their jobs, the results also showed that stress levels were rising and over 37% of people were in fear of redundancy.
“Employees who are grateful to have a job at all are less likely to grumble and more likely to see scorched earth rather than greener grass on the other side of the fence. Without action to tackle some of the stresses and strains that are clear in our survey, employers could find employees’ health and well-being deteriorating, and employee engagement tailing off at precisely the time they need all hands to the pump to survive the recession and thrive in the recovery.”
These results just go to show how big an effect the recession is having on businesses and their employees. Remember, job satisfaction is a key part of employee morale. There are a number of simple ways of increasing the satisfaction level, hold meetings with employees, find out what they want, it might be anything as simple as vending machines for the staff room or a new fridge!
Students that are due to graduate this year are the first year of students to have paid high tuition fees throughout their university career following the fee increases that were introduced in 2006, this is expected to be around £3000.
All students that are due to graduate from this year are expected to have a debt of around £15,700, this is a huge increase on the average debt that was £11,600 in the summer of 2008.
As we know this year is worse than ever with graduate opportunities very low and 2.1 million people unemployed the average starting salary in a graduate role is £22,300 down £400 on last year.
This was the first year that expectations for starting salaries had not increased since the High Fliers survey began in 1995.
New figures show that 25% more students are staying in education than this time last year. The research carried out by High Fliers involved around 16,000 students has found that as the job market slows up more students are enrolling for further education.
The research found that 52% of students thought that the prospects for new graduates a getting a job were very limited and 36% thought that they would not get a graduate job this year.
The survey found that teaching was the most popular career choice this year, up from third last year. the top three career choices were:
The budget that was announced today by Alistair Darling will cause controversy across the employment sector. The announcement included a rise in statutory redundancy pay from £350 to £380 for every year of service. He did not say when the change would happen but he did say that it was important for those who have been affected by the recession.
This may cause concerns for business who are planning on redundancies, it is a difficult time for many companies and the extra money has not been budgeted.
The budget also included £1.7billion towards funding for Job Centres to combat the growing rate of the unemployed.
The CIPD have warned the government against creating jobs rather than focusing on improving skills. The concerns are that people who have lost there job during the recession and have skills shortages will lose out in the long term because of their employability. With so many people being out of work there are alot of skills for employers to choose from when plugging the gaps in there recruitment needs.
“John Philpott, Chief Economist at the CIPD said that although many top university graduates would be joining the ranks of unemployed, training was still essential to improve overall employability. We approached the current recession with a backlog of joblessness, and they are the ones who will be at the back of the queue when looking for work,”
According to Community Care article, one in nine social worker job vacancies in England go unfilled. The numbers which were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act have shown that on 31 January 2009 there was an average 10.9% vacancy rate in the 96 councils that responded to the magazine’s national survey - equivalent to 8,317 vacant posts in England.
The figures were given by the councils over the past two months and were published for the first time, also show a marked increase on the national vacancy rate, which has been close to 10% since 2006.
Queries have been raised to why there is a struggle to fill roles as there are so many people unemployed, is it that there is a lack of training in these areas or people do not want to work in this sector after the bad publicity that has surrounded these roles.
The Work Foundation have have advised the government to improve the budget for jobs, the new budget could be used to invest in new government projects, a short-time working scheme to help employers reduce hours whilst retaining staff and to create more public sector employment.
This call is similar to the one by the Trade Union Congress’ budget submission which outlined how £25billion of public funds would kick start growth and employment.
This sort of government funding is crucial as unemployment is still on the increase and the concerns that it could reach three million by 2010 could happen earlier than expected if nothing is done.