What is causing the labour shortages at the moment?

There Certainly doing OK, I wouldn't say booming and most operating on with skelton and inexperienced staff, lots of reports of poor service, limited facilities etc (not blaming the inexperienced staff who've been thrown in at the deep end). The Irish hospitality sector, can not and won't survive on the staycation market, and most accepted the 2021 was long lost and basically ticking over in the hope international travel will fully return in 2022.

Its allot of reasons but one I can speak on from personal experience of being highly educated with significant experience and struggling to find work is that employers for some reason or another are extremely picky as to who they take on and often it comes down to how well someone does in an interview over how well they can actually do the job.

As for service roles, all require a minimum of 2 years experience working in a similar role, it used to be the case that employers would train in new staff and support them as they learn the ropes, they dont want to do this anymore and will only employ inexperienced staff who the employer knows personally or is connected to in some way.

Employers have silly expectations of applicants and this results in unemployment and labor shortages across all sectors.

Nepotism should be banned, employers should have to give each job applicant constructive and informative feedback outlining the job criteria and why they didnt get the job, service jobs should be banned from expecting 2+ years experience from applicants and should be supported in training in new staff.

I agree however, my point is they are not working part time, in many incidents working long hours, no training and expected in essence to carry out functions of experienced and qualified staff due to serious staff shortages.

I fully agree and support any teenager working part time in any business, I did it myself, my point being, there's potential exploitation going on and this I don't agree with.

Talking to a lad in horticulture recently, he'd lost 3 Eastern European lads who were with him the last few years. They were claiming the pup while working away for over a year before revenue twigged them. The boys didn't fancy paying back 20 grand each n went off to Holland.

Completely agree but there is no one to supervise or support.

Genuinely applied to hundreds of service & retail jobs from the year I left school to the year I started my postgrad 3 years ago and never got any job. I had my cv checked by employment advisors and went for interview training (not that I ever got an interview)

My brother is a few years younger and is in the same boat as I was, he's a student and cant even get his foot in somewhere packing shelves or collecting glasses in a pub.

Nearly all of his friends who are working got in somewhere because a relative or family friend knew a manager.

I even applied to multiple ads for Rosie and Jims chicken products in dublin, screaming for staff. Twice or possibly three times, not even a reply. I cannot work in retail, for personal reasons. Been there before, at the top. Looking at dumbing down my CV now.

Your story all too common and sorry to hear this. Remain positive, I know easier said than done. I think it's really unfortunate that some think people are not genuinely trying to apply for jobs and essentially being ignored with the only narrative being "There's a shortage of Labour"

Good luck regardless 😉

Completely disagree, firstly Hospitality is not open a wet week, the RAI constantly stated 180k Hospitality staff looking forward to returning to work, at the time of that absurd statement the department of SW own stats stated 60k of pup recipients were from. Hospitality sector and I might add from. Numerous roles that had nothing to do with restaurants.

There continues to be this ill informed notion that PUP was too generous. As of September 2020 ( yes 2020) the PUP payment was drastically reduced, not more than 12% retained the max rate of €350 pw, Most get €300, €250 or €203 pw. As of 7th September 2021, anyone on the €250 and lower rate goes onto JSA and all students returning to full time education loose it

So just to put a little context, also. Worth pointing out there are still sectors fulling closed to include children's play centres, bowling alleys and even a lot of Pubs and restaurants have not reopened.

Finally there is by far more people in receipt of the wage subsidy scheme, in essence government paying 75% of payroll cost for 100"s of thousands of staff, essentially PUP under a different name propping up thousands of businesses.

It is, the Pandemic speeded up the move to online shopping and customers unlikely to return to high Street. Big cities might survive but a lot of large rural towns have seen footfall plummet since restrictions ended.

I don't equate Mac Donald's in the category of Hospitality sector and I'm not wishing to demean the perfectly good jobs they offer, I would question rates of pay, terms and conditions etc but I do take your point.

But the original question stems in part from labour shortages in two main sectors, Hospitality and construction as these are the sectors that have been most vocal about shortages. Whilst my experience is hospitality, I've laid out some reasons but its actually also the case some businesses in this sector are infact not actually hiring or bringing back experienced and qualified staff that are actually available and have been applying, instead relying on reduced staffing levels, reduced services and hiring less experienced part time staff. Just as an example, a number of hotels are not offering leisure facilities, some have reduced menu's, changed breakfast service format, one well known hotel recently fed its customers at its sister hotel across the road and a lot have either reduced or stopped room service. I've also explained an enormous amount of very experienced staff have left the country, not all but a lot. I've further stated the hospitality sector was very poor in taking up wage support schemes allowing them in some way retain staff, instead letting staff go and are now scratching their heads wondering how did that happen.

I don't know much about construction but I do know, more and more tradespeople are only being offered roles in a self employed capacity (contractor status), this is neither practical or viable for a lot of trades people so in a small way is perhaps affecting recruitment.

I expect there's a certain amount of people who've walked away from jobs and possibly out of the market completely after re-examining their priorities.

I mean, if your work day has consisted of both parents getting up at stupid o'clock, getting kids up and out the door to creche, getting back at five and spending an hour with the kids, rallying them to bed and then collapsing on the couch, monotonously over and over, lockdown would have been a massive shock to the system.

You can imagine plenty of people would have spent that time thinking, "Jaysus this is hard", but also, "WTF am I doing with my life". There would be a realisation with many people that one parent could ditch work, in full or in part, and between the savings on creche and other things, they'd only be down €2k a year, which can be found by reducing spending on cars or on TV or whatever

A huge amount of it is this, there's people who were treated awfully by the hospitality sector, crap pay, conditions and hours who have now found out there's far better and more stable jobs out there. The entire hospitality industry and from the anecdotal stories ive heard especially the pubs need to wake up and start treating their staff like people.

Although its not really surprising that the pubs are the worst offenders and are still acting like its everyone else who is in the wrong considering their absolute inability to adapt or change. Every time they are ever faced with a challenge or issues their lobbyists run to government to encircle the wagons and protect them from any consequences of being intransigent troglodytes.

In construction, my boss has an awful time getting lads.

One fella, actually good to work wasn't bothered about going back to site legitimately, claiming pup until hes booted of and doing under the counter work for himself.

The agencies are offering the dregs, one fella on his first day drove a telehander into materials and literally fcuked off home. Lads with bad attitudes etc.