No alternative to fixing the jobs crisis

That’s a satisfying one place ahead of Jersey, way ahead of the UK’s 44th and substantially ahead of supposedly happy places like the Scandinavian countries.

Despite that, however, the island has a chronic shortage of staff – perhaps as high as 1,500, and the worst it has been for decades. The other surprising thing from last Tuesday’s Chamber of Commerce industry event was that no-one’s apparently to blame, certainly not the island’s population and migration laws.

In a way, that’s disappointing. If someone was at fault, the problem might swiftly be resolved. Since that remedy is not available, any solution will be far harder to find.

That, too, is troubling. Despite all the protests from people who really should know better that Guernsey has too much immigration and is ‘too full’, the reality is it is too empty.

Government spending and services are predicated on a working population of more than 31,000. Any decline has a serious impact on revenues, businesses, government operations themselves and the quality of the Guernsey offering, especially in hospitality.

As the latest RPI figures have shown, higher wages for scarce employees helps drive up prices – and makes the island a less attractive place to come and work in what is already a competitive international marketplace for staff.

In short, the employee crisis has to be fixed and will be a stiff test of government’s resourcefulness and creativity. Brexit was always going to be a difficult and unknown process for the island, and that’s before the impact of the pandemic.

‘Imaginative’ solutions to the recruitment problem have been promised by Employment and Social Security, and that is also to be welcomed. The turnout for last week’s Chamber event showed how significantly this is hurting industry.

The reality is this remains one issue that is too serious for the island as a whole not to be resolved.