Looking for a new job today in Britain is nothing short of torture.
Rejection after rejection; long application after long application. If you are lucky enough to get an interview, you can do everything right and still walk away with nothing but an AI-generated rejection email.
The baseline figure for unemployment in Britain is rising. At the start of 2025 it was 4.4 percent. Today it was announced that it has jumped to 5 percent. The number of unemployed workers is steadily inching closer to two million.
But even this rising figure does not represent the real situation for working people, especially young workers.
Youth unemployment currently sits at a staggering 12.5 percent. Between May and July 2025, job vacancies fell by 5.8 percent and for every graduate role there was an average of 140 applications submitted. Companies are closing applications weeks early because they are being overwhelmed with responses.
This comes at the same time that workplace stress is rising because of unrealistic expectations in the workplace. 91 percent of adults are experiencing high stress in their workplaces and only 33 percent of 18-24 year olds feel they can have a work life balance.
This begs the question: why are some people struggling to find work while others are massively overworked?
Simply put, the answer is profit. For the bosses, the easiest way to cut costs is to cut staff and make sure the remaining workers are being squeezed to their physical and mental limits to produce the work of many people. And if they refuse, there are hundreds of applicants ready to replace them.
Economic crisis
This problem is getting worse because of the crisis-ridden state of British capitalism.
For example, 16 percent of British companies are either already ‘zombie companies’ or at risk of becoming zombie companies, i.e. stagnant companies that earn just enough money to continue operating and servicing their debts, but are unable to grow or pay off their debts.
To avoid sliding into ‘zombie’ territory, these companies are desperate to reduce their costs, which often means slashing jobs.
The vast majority of these zombie companies are in hospitality and construction. Hospitality in particular is an industry which workers – especially young workers – have relied upon for a sure job to fall back on. But this is now rapidly changing.
In August, it was reported that there are 4.1 percent fewer jobs in the hospitality sector since October 2024. This drastic drop accounted for more than half of UK job losses in that period.
So not only are jobs being lost across the economy, they are also being decimated in a sector that people often turn to when they are in between jobs.
Public sector employers, who employ 18 percent of British workers, are also attempting to cut costs through austerity measures. This is leading to massive overwork in sectors like teaching and healthcare. In 2024, the TUC found that two out of five teachers were working a whopping 26 hours a week unpaid.
On top of this, some of the most profitable and productive companies (from the point of view of capitalism, at least) are in the banking and insurance sectors. These sectors are capital intensive, meaning they don’t need to employ lots of labour to make profits. This means that what little growth there is in the British economy is barely producing more jobs.
Starmer’s government is also pushing for more investment in AI, a sector whose sole purpose is to automate jobs and drive down labour costs in other sectors. The government is particularly keen to use AI to slash public sector jobs, e.g. in the NHS and civil service.
Everywhere you look, the British capitalists are employing fewer and fewer people, and squeezing those who remain to an unbearable extent.
Instead of investing in improvements to machinery and technology to raise the productivity of labour, it’s usually cheaper and easier to just burn through overworked employees, and replace them once they’re exhausted.
Vicious cycle
In yet another own goal from Starmer’s Labour, the government has poured fuel on the fire by raising National Insurance tax for businesses in last year’s Budget. These changes, which came into effect this financial year, have increased NI contributions for employers by up to 15 percent for each employee.
The government wants to use this to raise £25 billion to help plug the massive, growing state deficit, and service their loans from the big banks.
However, this has led to companies reducing their staff. In the last year, the number of private sector businesses with vacancies has dropped from 65 percent to 57 percent.
This is also a warning to those who suggest that simply taxing businesses is the silver-bullet solution to the crisis: as long as profit governs society, the impacts of taxes and regulations will be pushed back onto the worker.
For British capitalism, this is a vicious cycle: as workers get poorer, they are less able to spend money on goods and services, further cutting away at profits.
The ruling class are ‘damned if they do, damned if they don’t’ – because their system has ultimately reached its limits.
