Covid-19 and Brexit have created a “perfect storm” of unemployment and skills shortages that are roiling supply chains across the U.K., with substantial declines in truckers and forklift drivers that are showing early signs of slowing.
Those are among the key takeaways from a report released Monday from Logistics UK, a trade organization based in Kent that compared workforce figures between the April-June periods of 2019 and this year. It said Britain’s logistics industry employed 2.56 million people in the second quarter of 2021, of whom 11% were European Union nationals, down from almost 14% before in the second quarter of 2019.
