It has much more to do with ending Freedom of Movement with the EU. In this respect Brexit has worked (although who knows the long term implications). Basically labour demands have gone through the roof and its now an employee market. My aunt who is a hotel cleaner just got a £500 monthly increase and has been offered a retention bonus. Lorry / truck drivers are constantly being approached to switch jobs with higher payouts.

The rest of the market is getting a feel of what its like to be a software engineer.

If you want to do it old-school style you can go out and break some windows[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

Those jobs are temporary.

On the other hand how many jobs were made redundant as a side-effect of the pandemic? Catering moving a lot towards delivery, people realizing they can actually work from home, etc.

You can create jobs to do anything. E.g. build the Sydney Harbour Bridge. I’d be building solar power stations and nuclear ones to create jobs and reduce carbon emissions longer term.

If we’re going to be that cynical, we could just pay people to dig holes in the ground and fill them back up again.

We don’t do that, for good reason.