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Ouch! Taken at face value, the latest UK jobs report is bad pretty much wherever you look. Admittedly, some of it looks more like noise than signal. Take the 100,000 drop in payrolled employment. That is a big number, but one that will almost certainly get revised up. We saw something similar last May, where an initially reported 109k drop was then revised up to a much more modest -14k decline. There are plenty of similar examples in recent history. Still, backward revisions to both February and March are a reminder that the situation is fragile. Weakness has been particularly concentrated in consumer-facing sectors most affected by last year’s tax and minimum wage hikes. That pressure is only likely to be exacerbated by the incoming energy shock. Source link...

Seven in 10 of the UK public are worried about the economic impacts of AI, six in 10 think it will eliminate more jobs than it creates, half think its impact will be worse than a normal recession – and one in five think it will create civil unrest. People are particularly worried about the impacts on entry-level jobs and young people more generally: nearly six in 10 agree with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s 2025 prediction that AI could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs within five years. New research by King’s College London's Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Policy Institute finds that while fear of AI's impact on jobs and society is widespread and cuts across every group, there is somewhat less concern about the impact on people’s own jobs, and some groups are more excited about the positive impacts, particularly employers, men generally and male undergraduate students in particular. The findings are being launched at the King's AI Summit: Workforce...

Lord Wolfson insisted Next had to make a profit. "If you look at retail over the last 25 years... 70 to 80% of the names that were there then have gone. And what you can't do is say, we just won't run the business for profit because if you don't run the business for profit, you just don't stay in business," he said.He also repeated his criticisms of the government's Employment Rights Act, warning one aspect of the legislation meant it was "going to get much harder" for Next to offer more hours for its staff.One of the reforms includes a requirement for employers to offer guaranteed hours to casual workers in a bid to curb the use of zero-hours contracts.While not a fan of zero-hours contracts, Lord Wolfson said the new rules reduced the ability to offer extra hours at busy times "because the risk is you then have to contract for those hours forever"."You can't afford to... have...

The boss of Next has sounded the alarm about a “dramatic fall” in the number of entry-level jobs in the UK that is driving up youth unemployment, saying the retailer now receives twice as many applicants for each role than two years ago.Lord Wolfson said the clothing and homeware chain, where he has been chief executive since 2001, typically received 10 applications for every job in its shops in 2024 but that number has now risen to 19.“That doubling of applicants for shop jobs is indicative of just how big the crisis is in youth unemployment at the moment,” he told the BBC.Wolfson’s comments came as a report commissioned by the government is expected to find that Labour has failed to tackle the soaring number of people not in education, employment or training (Neet) and must launch a “system reset” involving a fresh attempt to overhaul health and disability benefits.Alan Milburn, who is leading a review into why almost a...

London – When a client asked her a year ago to design a glossary to train an artificial intelligence system, translator Jessica Spengler realized she was going to train her own replacement.“That was the day I really thought ... my job is going,” said the 52-year-old, who translates into English for German educational and historical organizations.In the U.K., where services account for around 80% of the economy, AI has become flexible, fast and inexpensive competition for many white-collar workers, with the impacts beginning to emerge. Source link...

Catherina, 24, in BrightonWhen Catherina finished her degree in digital film production in London, she thought her prospects of finding work were good, but she has found the jobs market tough.“I was coming out of uni very expectant and hopeful, but then I was facing a very competitive industry,” she said. “I was always hearing nothing back.”She has produced a few short films that have been shown at festivals and found occasional work on film and TV productions as a runner – a job generally seen as the first rung on the ladder of the industry. But finding more than that has been tricky.She said she had believed if she put in the work she would reap the rewards. “It was ‘work ethic, do the hustle and it will pay off one day’.”She said she was “blessed” to be able to live with her parents while she looked for permanent work, but said she would “love” to have her own...

Luke, 23, who studied product design at Central St Martin's University, has not found a job even after applying for more than 400 positions.The application process is quite vile. You apply, but then the [online process] wants to know the exact same information somewhere else in a different form.What you end up having to do is actually go through it again and redo all of it from scratch.Any normal person coming out of a university degree would think: "Yes, I've got a degree. I am now open to all these starting, junior jobs".You find out they haven't got the finances or AI has just replaced a whole load of jobs.The amount of rejections definitely make you depressed. It's humiliating. I started [claiming] Universal Credit in March last year. Entering into the job centres is really depressing. I felt a sense of rejection. The fact that everything I've done means nothing, in this day and age it's useless. It's the Catch-22...

Rising rates of youth unemployment have created a split at the top of government over how fast it should meet its promise to give young people the full minimum wage.Peter Kyle, the business secretary, is understood to believe now is not the time to give 18- to 20-year-olds the full minimum wage, which Labour promised to do in its manifesto.Others believe there is little evidence to show that recent pay rises for low-paid workers have had any effect on unemployment.Torsten Bell, a Treasury minister, told the BBC on Friday morning: “If you look at what the Low Pay Commission said in their annual report, they didn’t find evidence that previous increases in the minimum wage for young people had had an effect on their employment.”The splits have emerged following a landmark government-backed report this week by the former Labour minister Alan Milburn, who found that youth unemployment was costing Britain more than £125bn a year.Milburn’s report revealed the number of...

A shock government-backed report this week warned of the danger of a “lost generation” of young people in Britain, as the number of 16- to 24-year-olds not in education, employment or training (Neets) rose to more than 1 million.According to official UK statistics, roughly 13.5% of young people are not in work or college. Among 18- to 24-year-olds the share rises to 15.8% – nearly one in six.In the Netherlands, the equivalent figure has been below 5% for well over a decade. According to Eurostat, whose wider 15-29 age bracket produces a higher figure, the Dutch Neet rate was 5.3% last year.The Resolution Foundation concluded in a recent report that if Britain could match the Dutch Neet rate, 600,000 more 18- to 24-year-olds would be learning or earning today.Alan Milburn, the former Labour cabinet minister who authored the review, said Britain might not be able to copy directly from the Netherlands because traditions, cultures and structures were different. “But boy...

New placements announced as Government accelerates its Youth Guarantee to give every young person the chance to earn or learn. Expansion of support will help thousands more young people gain hands-on experience, build skills and move into work over the next three years. Move comes after Alan Milburn’s interim report into youth unemployment highlighted the vital importance of work experience. Young people across the country will be helped onto the career ladder thanks to the creation of 300,000 new work experience and training placements in sectors including construction, health and social care and hospitality. The new placements, part of a £2.5 billion youth employment support package, will see young people gain hands-on experience, build real skills and move into sustained work. They come as the Government accelerates its Youth Guarantee to give every young person the chance to earn or learn and reverse the rising numbers not in education, employment, or training (NEET) - currently...