An employer featured in STV News coverage of reaction to the UK Budget says rising product and employment costs have forced their business to increase prices, while the risks of hiring are weighing on confidence.
The speaker, who is not identified in the supplied transcript, said all the business’s products had increased in cost. They also cited higher National Insurance costs for employing staff as another pressure on the business’s ability to make a fair profit.
Raising customer prices had been necessary to cover those costs, the employer said, but selling at higher prices had itself become a struggle. “There doesn’t seem to be a route out of it,” they told STV.
The employer said lower interest rates would help and called for the government to provide greater stability. They also wanted conditions that would give employers more confidence to recruit, saying they would hire more people if that confidence improved.
For the speaker, the balance between risk and reward currently favours caution. They described employing people as carrying considerable risk and said that, at present, the balance felt weighted towards higher risk.
The account offers one employer’s perspective on pricing and recruitment pressures. The supplied excerpt does not identify a specific Budget measure or provide figures for the business’s cost increases.