The number of job vacancies in the UK has increased in recent weeks, and there are nearly two million jobs available now.
Some industries are facing severe staff shortages, with the transportation sector alone short of more than 100,000 truck drivers.
Potential employees are offered salaries up to twice what they normally would, just to encourage more people to change their careers.
The problem was caused by Britain’s exit from the European Union and the shortage of foreign workers, the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to an analysis by the Employment and Employment Consortium (REC), teachers, care workers, cooks and cleaners are the most in-demand occupations with tens of thousands of jobs available.
Job Recovery Tracker app monitors the number of jobs posted since January 2020.
It shows that after a sharp increase in September, the numbers are now much higher than they have ever been.
In all, 1,903,045 jobs were created during the week of September 13-19, compared to 1,795,856 in the previous week.
Here are the number of new job vacancies posted in the UK in just one week from 13 to 19 September, according to data from the Employment and Employment Consortium (REC):
- Guardians: 55 019
- Chefs: .36,471
- Primary school teachers: 32942
- Metalworkers: 22956
- Detergent: 28220
- Truck drivers: 7513
- Number of new employees: 6557
- Sellers: 32615
- School secretariat: 2678
- Postal workers: .2251
The largest increase in vacancies was in Wales and Northern Ireland, while London has not seen such a large increase.
While the large number of new jobs is “good news,” REC CEO Neil Carberry said, he cautioned that “there is now a real chance that a shortage of available workers will slow the economy’s recovery.”
He added, “A recent survey by the Center for Entrepreneurship for Employers showed that three out of five had more than 30% more vacancies than usual, with 97% saying it was taking longer to fill.”
Neil Carbury concluded, “Manpower shortages and the resulting hiring difficulties constrain the economy by limiting production growth and innovation, so it is important that we resolve them quickly.”