31 October 2025
There needs to be a supplementary poster: once you’ve become a doctor, how to get a job. Photo Workers.
Foundation year 1 doctor members of the British Medical Association (BMA) have voted by a huge margin to strike over unemployment and lack of training opportunities.
These doctors have recently graduated from medical school: 97 per cent voted to support strike action. The first strike will run from Friday 14 November until Wednesday 19 November, unless the government resumes talks in good faith.
Not finding work
One-third of all resident doctors (formerly known as doctors in training or junior doctors) surveyed by the BMA in July had been unable to secure substantive or even regular locum work from August onwards. Over half of foundation year 2 doctors (in their second year of residency) could not find work.
Around 30,000 doctors have to compete for just 10,000 places in the first round of specialty training, NHS England figures show. In psychiatry, the worst affected specialty, more than 10,000 doctors applied for 500 places. And in general practice five doctors apply for every general practitioner training post.
Demand up
Patient demand for GP appointments and other services continues to rise. Yet the government has committed to provide only 1,000 more training places across all specialities under the NHS Ten Year plan.
The newly elected Chair of the BMA’s Resident Doctors Committee, Jack Fletcher, said, “Patients need doctors to have jobs. Doctors need to know they will have jobs. And they need to know they will be paid what they’re worth.”
Only capitalism could engineer a situation where high patient demand coexists with high doctor unemployment.
• A shorter, edited version of this article appears in the November/December 2025 issue of Workers magazine.