Restaurants fill the jobs gap as stores fail on British high streets

EMBATTLED high streets have created more jobs than they lost in recent years as new positions in cafes, restaurants and estate agencies outweighed those gone from the retail industry.

Radical changes in the way people shop have sent retailers to the wall, threatening the future of Britain’s town centres. But the high street is not dead because businesses have sprung up to fill the gaps with food, drink and other services, with more jobs to match.

Employment in high street businesses rose to almost 3m in 2017, up 10pc from 2012, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Retail employment on the high street fell by 26,000 over that period, to 926,000. This does not include other types of retail such as out-of-town shopping centres and online stores.

By contrast, the numbers working in accommodation and food service activities on high streets surged more than 30pc to at least 130,000. Other services industries, such as estate agencies and solicitors, also climbed by 14pc, adding a net 180,000 jobs to take total employment to 1.45m.

Detailed data for 2017 has only become available now, but broader sets of jobs numbers indicate the trend has continued in the past two years even as retailers have struggled. National employment in wholesale, retail and motor repair – the category used in jobs market analysis – slid by 26,000 over the course of 2018. At the same time, accommodation and food services employment nationally rose by 87,000.

Restaurants and cafes expanded in the wake of the financial crisis when retailers such as Woolworths collapsed, leaving cheaper space available on the high street, according to Kate Nicholls, chief executive of industry group UK Hospitality.

“At the same time we had the explosion of casual dining, which is a relatively new phenomenon. Into those sites went the Costa coffees, the Itsus, the Prets, as well as the Wagamamas, Carluccio’s – they all went on an expansion trail,” she said. “They were able to do so and they were able to invest because the climate and the conditions were right and they created an awful lot of jobs on the back of it.”

At the same time retailers have cut back on staff, automating checkouts and reducing service levels. By contrast, the food business remains labourintensive with as many as 40 staff working in a typical restaurant.

But Ms Nicholls warned the trend of more restaurants opening has plateaued and may be reversing, with rising costs such as business rates adding to woes including a labour shortage.