Quote:
Originally Posted by mss
I would put this differently.
We have put so many skilled people into the non-employed pool due to a lack of quality jobs with quality rewards that we are in danger of losing key skills.
There is no skills shortage in the UK - only a skilled job shortage. We have huge numbers of skilled/educated people working in lower skilled roles e.g. engineers working in retail as a result.
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This is exactly what happened to my career. Good engineering jobs dried up and as I got older and manufacturing reduced I was not wanted, only young straight out of university were flavour of the month. Skills and valuable knowledge learnt over the years meant nothing to employers. I ended up in the gas retail industry, at least my engineering skills were put to some use. Quickly ended up as General Manager for a group of manufacturers with retail and internet outlets and was responsible for the installation and service teams in addition. So the transferable skills were well used but earnings were reduced and I felt it was just such a waste of mine, and all those in my position, who's skills and attributes would have been an asset.
However I cannot agree with your comment that there is no shortage of skilled people. I've been retired for 7 years and not interested in going back to the grindstone, but I get emails regularly from agencies offering me engineering and design jobs. The employers are waking up to the fact that a new piece of paper doesn't make the owner of it an engineer etc. and have the knowledge and ability to do the job expected of them. This was something I often found out myself and had much better success with employing a young apprentice trained engineer than an unproved engineering graduate. They had the theories but couldn't get them to work, the apprentice trained could. This and not spending enough on training and apprenticeships means there's a real shortage of home grown skills base left to call upon. With a much reduced industrial manufacturing capacity and the reduction of investment in manufacturing running it down why would companies invest in training. Hence our reliance on EU skilled workers much cheaper, no training budgets, and work for less.