Finance Monthly - November 2021 Edition

recent report by accountancy firm Grant Thorton revealed that there were nearly 1 million job vacancies in the UK, with around half of this figure being in the food and drink industries which have heavily relied on an EU workforce for the past 20 to 30 years. While this might imply that Brexit is to blame for the UK’s supply chain crisis, the government and other prominent figures are insisting that the crisis is being caused by the lingering impact of the pandemic, making it difficult to understand what exactly is at the root of the problem. Is Brexit Causing the UK’s Supply Chain Crisis? Many industry bosses are blaming Brexit for the crisis, claiming that there’s a substantial lack of British workers filling the gaps left by Brexit in the haulage industry, hospitality industry, warehousing, and the meat production sector. In 2019, the average percentage of EU workers in meat processing companies stood at approximately 70%, according to BMPA. Similarly, a March 2016 KPMG report for the British Hospitality Association showed that between 12.3% and 23.7% of the UK’s hospitality sector’s workforce was made up of EU nationals. At the time, KPMG estimated that the sector required 62,000 EU migrants per year to be able to maintain current activities and grow. Finance Monthly. Bus i ne s s & Economy 33