IT’S a good time to be a recruitment consultant…

According to a recent article in City AM, there were 1.8 million job openings listed in the UK in the week leading up to May 1 - up 15% on the same time in the previous month.

Consequently, recruiters are "working overtime" to fill the openings, according to Neil Carberry, chief executive of the Recruitment and Employment Federation (REF).

Mr Carberry said: “The data continues to show that employers across the UK are eager to hire new staff.”

In addition to the 30 million-odd people who are already employed in the UK, that has to be excellent news.

There is a problem though.

A few weeks after the initial report, the REF was back on the pages of City AM, stating that an “increasing skills shortage” could hit companies’ growth.

Mr Carberry explained: “Labour supply is the big issue we have to solve.”

Recruitment agencies attributed their inability to fill positions to a shortage of candidates or, more precisely, a lack of candidates that were sufficiently qualified.

Let's now depart from the UK and head to California, where businesses are putting increasing pressure on workers to return to their place of work.

Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, made it clear that everyone must work a minimum of 40 hours a week at the workplace.

‘If you don’t show up,’ he said, ‘We’ll assume you have resigned.’

An identical order was issued by Apple as well, but they soon encountered problems when rumours spread that half of their workers would decide to quit rather than return to the workplace full-time.

During the pandemic, people adapted to quite different working methods.

These adjustments to working practices and what employees now expect from a job will now present challenges for employers and, by implication, both the UK and global economies.

Many current employees – and particularly those classed as ‘Millennials’ or ‘Generation Z’, the generation that comes after them - have substantially different expectations than their parents' generation did.

They prefer to work for organisations that share their beliefs and don't place too much emphasis on compensation.

It's possible that reports that "millennials demand nap time and pets at work" are little overstated, but there's no denying that many people who have worked from home have no desire to return to commuting, as Apple is now discovering.

Employers and the recruitment agencies acting on their behalf will therefore need to provide more flexible pay and benefit plans.

To address the skills gap, they may have to tolerate working remotely for at least some of the week and provide more resources to their employees in terms of extensive training and development programmes.

Finding the right employees is now one of the most significant issues for employers to deal with given the conflict in the Ukraine, ongoing supply chain issues, and the impact of inflation on operational costs.

Since it may be crucial to the UK's continued economic recovery, let's hope both employers and the employment agencies can find a solution.