We’d better get used to labour shortages – they’re not going anywhere

The challenge is how we keep our economies growing and our standards of living rising as our population ages and the number of people of working age shrinks, writes Hamish McRae

For anyone starting out in the job market, it is a mixed prospect (Getty Images)

Where are the workers? Employers on both sides of the Atlantic are crying out for people to take the jobs, and the labour markets in the US and UK are the tightest they have been for a generation.

There are jobs galore. On Friday, new figures showed that American payrolls had shot up by 467,000 in January, much stronger growth than expected. There are 11 million unfilled vacancies, and despite the hit from Omicron, unemployment was at a steady 4 per cent.

Here in the UK, the picture is similar. We will get new data next week but the most recent numbers show employment in December up 184,000 on the month, unfilled vacancies hitting a new record of 1,247,000, and unemployment at 4.1 per cent.