John Lewis Partnership chair Dame Sharon White has cautioned that higher inflation is inevitable unless more people return to work
In the aftermath of the Covid pandemic as many as 1 million people, mainly aged between 50 and 70, are thought to have exited the labour market. White said she would like the government to encourage them to take up employment again.
White told Radio 4’s Today programme: “Regardless of what has happened coming out of Covid, if the labour market is that tight, if we continue to have far fewer people in work, looking for work – you’ve inevitably got more inflation and more wage inflation.
“I guess I would encourage any government to really think much more about how we encourage more people back into work.
“There’s not a business in the UK that’s not finding it very difficult to recruit at the moment because there are so many more jobs and so far fewer people looking for work. It’s a big issue.”
She believed that measures such as flexible retirement plans and retraining people might help encourage them to work again.
White said: “A million people out of the labour market has got profound, long-term, systemic implications and I would like there to be more of a debate, more of an open debate and certainly more of a debate between business and government.”
She also said that trading has been “tough” in recent months.
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