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Friday, April 11, 2014

UK has jobs jobs jobs but not enough skilled workers to fill vancancies

Cynthia Barker writes...good morning, or afternoon, evening depending on where you are reading 'Diary of an Immigration Adviser' from! Thank God it's Friday! Looking forward to the weekend and recharging my batteries - I WILL get to the gym!

Yesterday I wrote about how victims of domestic violence can apply for special leave to remain. Today I want to talk about a slightly happier subject - the economy and UK jobs.

The British economy is well on the way to recovery, especially in London and the South East of England where house prices are literally going through the roof. All these Chinese and Russians investors buying multi-million pound pads in Kensington and Chelsea. Tier 1 Investor Visas are proving very popular by the way - if you have a bit of cash a fancy starting a business here.

When the property market is on the move, jobs tend to follow, and there are plenty of job vacancies in the UK. The London Chamber of Commerce this week announced that businesses in the capital are short of skilled, qualified staff needed to keep the economy growing.

The Home Office are introducing a special highly skilled Tier 1 visa category for IT workers, the first expansion in managed migration to the UK, albeit limited to a few hundred visas a year, for many years.

NHS Trusts, as well as private Care providers, are also so short of nurses and carers that they are spending millions of pounds each year on highly paid temporary agency staff. I predict that we will see a return to nurse recruitment from my native Philippines in 2104/15, which is great because they have a surplus of trained nurses and we have a shortage of RGN's in the UK.

Back to UK jobs. Despite high unemployment, in London at least there have always been jobs available to those who want to work.

There are probably close to a million job vacancies in the UK right now, yet there are twice that number of people registered as unemployed! So how can there be all these vacancies when there are enough unemployed workers to fill them?

The answer is not simple. There are some people on benefits who either don't want to work, because they are happy to live cheap and get their rent paid by the rest of us taxpayers. There are others who cannot take a low paid job because they will be worse off working than on welfare benefits - the benefits trap.

However, the real reason there is an imbalance of job vacancies to "available" labour is that large numbers of the people on welfare are not sufficiently qualified to do the jobs which need doing!

There are not many unemployed nurses and doctors, or skilled IT workers or Carers. Nurses can earn up to £50 per HOUR for a weekend shift and care support workers can find a job anywhere in the country.

The reason employers have to look overseas to recruit the highly qualified staff is they cannot find enough of them here in the UK.

Employers are actively recruiting right now in EU countries, such as Bulgaria, Romania, Poland and new member Croatia. The non-EU market will I feel open up soon as nursing and care shifts go unfilled and patients are put at risk.

Anyway, I should get back to work myself! I have a visa refusal client coming in soon to see our appeal specialist. Wish me luck!

If you are the victim of abuse or domestic violence, or need advice on any immigration matter, EU or UK immigration law, or want to appeal against a refusal, call Cynthia Barker on 020 8731 5972 or email her your details and number Immigration@londonccs.com. Cynthia Barker is an OISC registered Immigration Adviser with a team of Level 3 Immigration Law Practitioners, Concept Care Solutions, Middlesex House, 29-45 High Street, Edgware, HA8 7UU.

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