Monday 24 March 2014

Fall in unemployment not so wonderfull in reality.

There was an interesting piece by former first Minister on Wales Online last Saturday in which he points out that the reduction in the number of jobless does not equal  an increase in the in work

He wrote....
"The unemployment figures came out on Budget Day. As a result they got lost in all the hoopla about George Osborne’s pension reform announcements. They are remarkable though.
The Welsh unemployment rate fell sharply over the three months to 6.7%, significantly below the UK rate of 7.2%.
Below the surface there is something rather odd going on. The total number of jobs in the Welsh economy only went up by 1,000 to 1,380,000 but unemployment fell by 12,000! How can that happen?
I guess that we are looking at the “discouraged worker” phenomenon. What it means is that 11,000 more people took themselves out of the labour market.
Not working but looking for work either, therefore, they don’t class themselves as unemployed.
Normally you get the opposite effect in a recovery – the “encouraged worker phenomenon”.
In the pit of a recession people with no work think the prospect of ever finding a job is so remote, they don’t consider themselves as unemployed.
During a recovery, jobs become a less hopeless prospect, so the same person would then be in the market for any jobs going. Therefore they’re unemployed."
So where are those who are not longer "signing on" but who are not in work?

One case I know of is a married women who became redundant  decided to sign, on even though any "benefits"  she would received would be reduced because her husband was in work .

But faced with the demands of the Universal Job Match system  she decided to sign off and carry on looking for work on her own bat, 

But of course we don't have details of the sort of jobs those who have actually found work have entered into. How many are part time,how many on the minimum wage for instance?.

Before Cameron,Clegg and Osbourne start patting themselves on the back lets see the reality.
.
 Since March 2013 use of the Universal Jobmatch site has normally been mandatory for all Jobseekers Allowance claimants but, in recent weeks, concerns has grown about the quality of the site's adverts.

An investigation by Channel 4 News finds that as many as one-in-three jobs now advertised on the government's Universal Jobmatch website are suspect.

The former Welfare Reform Minister Frank Field  hardly a man soft on welfare claimants  called on the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith, to "get a grip" on the Jobmatch service which is run by Monster.co.uk for the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP)

Field said the site was "bedevilled by fraud" and "out of control".

So the much vaunted fall in those jobless is not as big as it seems and if part time work is taken into account may not actually exist and those seeking work are told to apply for Jobs  on a system which advertises  which may not exist and even be run by people seeking to exploiting the jobseekrs by charging some sort of fee?

Rather than stark figures we need a full investigation to discover the reality of the sort of work  there is available and whether people are being foxed by their lical jobcentre to take up positions in which the may be exploited.

2 comments:

Der said...

Did you see the news about the Aldi jobs in Shroppshire? There was a queue of 1500 people hoping to get 1 of 40 positions.

glynbeddau said...

No I didn't see this but this but I'm not surprised. Its time we stop demonizing the unemployed and admit that there are few jobs for them out-there no matter how hard they are trying to find work.