National Careers Service LMI and Apprenticeship Bulletin March 2020

The week began with a launch event at the Merseyside Maritime Museum on Monday 3.2.20. It aims to promote careers in the sector by arranging a series of interactive employer or college led events across the area for learners and job seekers to get a favour of what the sector involves.

The Visitor Economy sector employs 3.2m in the UK and 57,000 in the Liverpool City Region. It is a sector with a diverse range of jobs – full-time, part-time, vocational, professional and ones that you might not associate with the sector such as HR and IT roles.

However, the sector still has many hard-to-fill vacancies. Many require no previous qualifications or experience and training can be provided on the job – often via apprenticeships – for candidates with the right customer service attitudes. 

Jeremy Dhadi from City and Guilds explained how Liverpool was the pilot city in the world for their new Global Hospitality Certificates. These are a series of digital accreditations that recognise vocational competencies and excellence in the sector and are recognised by employers around the world.

1. Brexit is going to happen - but little will really be resolved

Most graduates work for large businesses and many of those businesses have international focuses for their client base, their recruitment needs, their supply chains or any combination of those factors. Brexit will disrupt them all. The UK is still, at least until Dec 31^st, 2020, still in the European Customs Union or single Market.  

Many businesses ease their graduate skills shortages using overseas recruitment and any barriers to that will place a premium on corresponding UK graduates. But with the future trading relationship with the EU looking very unclear, and businesses fearing a cliff edge to the UK's transition period at the end of 2020, Brexit uncertainty will not be over at the end of January.

2. Skills supply and demand issues will become more urgent

We have both graduate underemployment and graduate shortage in the UK, sometimes even within similar disciplines (IT in particular). The reasons are a complex matrix of factors around graduate mobility; the ability of graduates to adapt; the barriers that SMEs face to recruitment; how students and graduates become aware of their options; and the choices business make in recruitment.

As we transition to new trading arrangements with the world, the way people are educated and trained in the UK and the difficulties employers experience in finding the right people will become more important. Longstanding issues of shortages of graduates entering tech, engineering, nursing and teaching are likely to persist and become more urgent.

3. The economic indicators are not looking great

On 19 December, the quarterly Bank of England Agent's Summary of Business Conditions - this for the final three months of the year - reported that 'Contacts' employment intentions remained negative. Several contacts said they were hoarding labour in the expectation of a recovery in demand in the near term. As a result, they expected their overall headcount to be unchanged.

'Some consumer services businesses reported cutting headcount to lower costs and improve productivity. There was an increase in the number of firms reporting recruitment freezes. And some contacts said they were using less temporary labour.'

Businesses are starting to look to reduce overall headcount for the first time since 2016, although the intention is modest. At the same time, the Bank of England does report that entry-level and apprenticeship recruitment seems stable and so there may not yet be too much to read into this for graduates. However, if business starts to become concerned at the way the UK's post-Brexit negotiations are going, it could be that we see a more sustained downturn in the jobs market. The latter half of 2020 is when this is likely to come to a head and we will know more.

Meanwhile Tristram Hooley believes: ‘Graduate employers will continue to be cautious throughout the rest of the recruitment season. By the end of the year they will have revised down their recruitment targets and recruited around the same number or slightly fewer graduates than last year. If the economy develops as predicted, we will then see modest growth next year. But if Brexit goes badly or there is a global economic shock all bets are off.’

Vijay Rathour, Grant Thornton: Evolving Cyber Threats – speaking at the University of Liverpool Management School Business Breakfast on 5.2.20

Described himself as, before joining Grant Thornton, ‘a lawyer and a nerd.’ He used to ethically hack and said he would look at computer systems and check for its weaknesses. Now he still does this but looks at how its defences can be strengthened. He never promises that it can be totally secure.

Cyber-attacks are a global problem. Last year he worked with a Turkish bank that lost $120m! However, cyber-attacks often have greater consequences on smaller businesses. Each year cyber-crime costs the UK £660bn while natural catastrophes like floods cost £200bn.

Lots of cyber-attacks are opportunistic. 41% of attacks are ransom ware ones aimed at extorting funds, but 20% are by angry people, often ex-employees who want to create mischief.

The main causes of a cyber incident are:

·       A system configuration problem

·       An action of an employee

·       An action of a supplier

·       An action of a third party

·       Natural disasters and Power failures

·       Acts related to violence, warfare or terrorism.

The 3 in bold i.e. ones involving a human interaction are the most common causes. But why are there these external threats? There is no barrier to entry. It isn’t necessary to have real technical skills to be a cyber-criminal. It is very lucrative. In 2018 it was estimated that globally the profit from cyber-crime was $1.5tn, compared to the profit from the global drugs trade of $1.2tn and compared to drugs it is very low risk. There are very few successful prosecutions for cyber-crime.

‘Exploits for sale’ i.e. there is an increasing trickle down of tech that can be bought to launch ever more sophisticated attacks

There is also a growth in the sale of security credentials and personal information via the dark web which enables easy targeting

In 2018 42% of UK SMEs and 65% of large companies identified a data breach or attack

In 2019 the most cyber attacked industrial sectors were healthcare, manufacturing, financial services, Government, and transportation. However, retail, oil, gas, energy and utilities, media and entertainment, legal services and education were all deemed to be growing in vulnerability.

Although AI and autonomous security are likely to become more important in cyber security, Vijay said there will always be jobs in cyber security.

The future cannot be predicted with precision or certainty. However, all the participants in the labour market make plans for the future. The rationale behind Working Futures is that a comprehensive, systematic, consistent and transparent set of projections can help to inform everyone about the world they are likely to face.

The latest results indicate:

Significant increases in the size of the working age population and the economically active workforce but with a slight decline (61.9% to 61.4%) in overall labour market participation rates, reflecting the ageing of the population;

Slow but steady output growth, combined with increases in labour productivity, resulting in a modest 0.3% p.a. increase in employment over the 2017-2027 period – about 1m new jobs;   “Replacement demands” (arising from the need to replace workers leaving the labour force for retirement and other reasons) mean that the total number of new job openings will be substantially higher (by a factor of over 11 times) than this “expansion demand”.

Employment and GVA growth in Construction are expected to slow notably compared to the previous 20 years, partly driven by the skills shortage facing the sector.

 Output in Trade, accommodation and transport is forecast to grow in line with the economy, whilst employment in the sector is expected to grow much more slowly than employment in the UK as a whole, driven by a shift in consumer patterns towards online shopping.

The Business and other services sector is forecast to see a moderation in its rate of growth in output and employment compared with the previous decade, although it is expected that it will still outpace growth in the wider economy as a whole.

The Public administration, health and education sector is expected to see some of the strongest growth in both employment and GVA compared with the other broad sectors, supported largely by increased demand for health services as the size of the population increases and it ages.

The main increases in employment levels are expected to continue to be focused in the private (marketed) parts of the service sector such as Business and other services.

Around 59% (20.7 million) of all jobs in the UK in 2017 were full-time, while around 28% (9.6 million) were part-time and the remaining 13% (4.5 million) were self-employed.

Employment status projections show the percentage of workers who are expected to be part-time, full-time, or self-employed by gender is expected to remain broadly stable over the decade to 2027.

The number of jobs in occupations typically requiring a high-level qualification is expected to continue to grow, albeit more slowly than over the previous decade.

The UK jobs market grew in the three months to December with nearly 33 million people in work, a new record, according to new figures from the ONS (Office of National Statistics). The employment rate grew to a high of 76.5%, 0.6% higher than last year and 0.4% higher than the previous quarter. The unemployment rate remains at 3.8%, 0.2% lower than the same period last year. 

The number of job vacancies increased by 7000 to 810,000, the first quarterly increase for more than a year. The Recruitment and Employment Confederation’s latest surveys showed that employers are now making more permanent hires as confidence in the economy rose following the December election.  

Sophie Wingfield, Head of Policy and Public Affairs at the Recruitment and Employment Confederation, said:

“Today’s increase in vacancy numbers means that as businesses start to look for more staff, an evidence-based immigration system will be crucial to supplying the skills that are needed across the economy. A sensible immigration plan that allows employers to recruit from abroad for sectors such as construction, health and technology where skills shortages are high is essential.”

Government funding worth £13m will fund world-first green energy projects including the UK’s first low carbon hydrogen plant at Essar’s Stanlow oil refinery.

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has stumped up £7.5m for the Stanlow Initiative plus £5.2m to fund live trials of hydrogen fuelling at Unilever’s Port Sunlight.

These projects aim to show hydrogen can be used as a substitute fuel for natural gas in manufacturing processes, helping companies transition to a low-carbon future and leading the way for others to follow.

When operational, the Stanlow facility will capture 600,000 tonnes of CO2 per annum – the equivalent of taking over 250,000 cars off the road.

Led by the HyNet consortium, the organisation will also receive £5.2m to fund live trials of hydrogen fuelling at Unilever’s Port Sunlight manufacturing site, which produces many of the UK’s home care and personal care products, and at Pilkington’s Greengate Works glass-making plant in St Helens.