The “Brexodus” — the British withdrawal from the EU — “is being felt particularly acutely in the agriculture industry, which relies heavily on manual laborers, especially from poor European countries like Romania and Bulgaria,” says the New York Times. Thousands of foreign-born workers have left England, or have decided not to return to harvest-time jobs on farms or other industries.
Several growers told the Times they were unable to harvest some of their crops or sold them at reduced value because they were harvested past their prime. “The big thing that’s on everybody’s mind is the labor shortage,” said Ross Mitchell, a fruit grower in Scotland. The Times said Mitchell lost 50 tons of fruit worth $680,000. The National Farmers Union, the major British farm group, said the agriculture sector had a labor shortage that varied from 13 to 29 percent on a monthly basis from May through September.
“Farmers are doing everything to persuade workers from the rest of Europe to come work for them,” including wages of up to $20 an hour and plush amenities, said the Times. Ahead of the referendum on leaving the EU, some advocates said foreign workers were stealing British jobs. “The laborers who now come to Britain tend to be older and less skilled, according to farmers, who say hiring British workers is nearly impossible,” reports the Times. Compounding the problem for growers is a decline in the value of the British pound, making seasonal jobs less attractive than in the past. “Recruitment of British workers is also difficult, industry officials say, because unemployment is already low in farming regions … and local residents are unwilling to move across the country for a job that does not offer long-term prospects.”