Ciarán Nugent: Employers struggling to recruit will have to offer better pay and conditions

Poor rates of pay and precarious terms of employment are key causes of the difficulties some employers have attracting staff

Last summer, stories about recruitment problems in hospitality were reported widely. One claim was that a kitchen porter job advertised for €30,000 could not be filled. This was all framed, ridiculously, in relation to the level of the pandemic unemployment payment (PUP) being too high. A survey of employers conducted between July and November, and published recently by Fáilte Ireland, suggests a supply crisis of 40,000 in the sector.

Between July and September, 2021 — when hospitality was still under some restrictions — employment numbers in the sector all but fully recovered relative to the same quarter in 2019, according to two other surveys collected by the Central Statistics Office (CSO).