Cognitive dissonance and the media

I am confused

Watching the TV news, 2 items seemed at odds.

On the one hand, it is August, 'A' level results day, youngsters celebrating and going off to uni' (Congrats to any young people  btw). This has been the same for a number of years. Then we hear of (some) young people graduating from uni' and not being able to find jobs with prospects, so they just do other stop gap jobs (another story, but still pertinent to this one).

The second news feature was about an industry leader talking about brexit and the potential effect upon the recruitment of international workers. In his view, not being able to recruit the skills needed, is really harmful to business. A point that is difficult to argue with if it is taken at face value.

My suspicion is that Britain has a lot of highly educated and capable people who are looking to get started in jobs with prospects. My other suspicion is that industry leaders are perfectly well aware of this, and yet they are disingenuously pretend(ing)   (edited typo just noticed) that they cannot find the right workers from the local candidate pool and they 'need' to recruit from a wider pool to attract the 'right' candidates. This has the affect of increasing competition and reducing salary expectations. I suspect that keeping salaries depressed is what this is actually about.

Caker wrote:yet they are disingenuously pretend that they cannot find the right workers

Capitalism must inherently have a pool of willing labourers desperate for jobs, hence why there is never zero unemployment.

http://www.personneltoday.com/hr/employment-levels-rise-candidates-fight-low-skilled-vacancies/

There are 24 applicants chasing every low-skilled job vacancy, according to the latest Labour Market Outlook from the CIPD and The Adecco Group.

The CIPD/Adecco Group attribute this to a number of factors, including sharp growth in the number of non-UK nationals from the EU and an increase in older workers and ex-benefit claimants in the employment market.

It is very interesting point CIPD/Adecco Group makes about those pesky 'ex-benefit claimants'. It sort of implies that they are a distinct category of worker  

I presume they are contrasted with those workers who just move from job to job with no gaps.

They should have written "utterly desperate ex-ESA benefit claimants who were found 'fit for work'".

I think we are getting into sub-categories now  

....Anyway, the question I should have posed in my original post was:-

Does the skills shortage (in the UK) really exist? or is it a myth disseminated by industry leaders?