The true story behind Britain’s unemployment figures

We were told this week that official unemployment jumped-up this week to over 2.5 million in Britain but this is a false figure in many ways. You are classed as employed if you do two or three hours a week that is so called employment. If you are self employed and sell a few things a week that is seen as employed. Also if you don’t sign on for Jobs seakers allowance JSA you are not picked up by the system so effectively not classed as unemployed even though clearly you are the government simply are not aware of you. All this is designed to mask the true figures of unemployment in this country. For a long time the official unemployment figures have defied gravity with the real economic situation seeming to not fit with the labour market figures. I’ve blogged before how much business’s m may be hoarding labour as the cost of re hiring and retraining would be extensive. As the crisis deepens and no sign of a recovery of any real magnitude is forthcoming these workers will be let go. unemployment could be as high as 6.3 million in the UK if a different counting measure was used, highlighting the true scale of joblessness, according to a new report from the TUC. The TUC said the higher figure - more than twice the official total - was revealed using an American measure, which includes people in part-time jobs because they cannot find full-time work and recent redundancies. The jobless total increased to 2.5 million last week and is expected to rise again in the coming months as the cuts deepen. But the TUC study suggested the actual number of unemployed people in the UK could be 6.3 million, which would be higher than any point since the early 1990s. Under-employment, which counts those doing temporary or part-time jobs because they cannot find permanent, full-time work, has risen to a record 1.9 million, according to the research. The TUC said temporary jobs were better than unemployment, but added that they tended to be low paid, insecure and offered little or no career prospects. Officials called on the Government to acknowledge the scale of the jobs "crisis" rather than repeat the "ill-informed" claim that there were plenty of jobs available. This jobs crisis is not confined to those out of work. Nearly two million people are being forced to take low-paid, insecure, short hours jobs because of the lack of proper full-time employment. This means people are taking home much less pay, which is putting a real strain on family budgets. "When ministers say there are plenty of jobs out there, they are ignoring the sheer numbers of people looking for work, as well as the suitability and location of the jobs available. "Rather than seek to blame unemployed people for being out of work, the Government should start helping them by putting proper resources into employment schemes. The report followed a study by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development which showed that job prospects are set to worsen in the coming months as firms make workers redundant. A survey of 1,000 employers also revealed a further widening of a North-South divide in the jobs market. There are 600,000 more people working part-time who say they want to work full-time, compared to three years ago, said the organisation. Graeme Cooke, IPPR Associate Director, said: "Every month that goes by, the urgent need for the new Youth Contract continues to grow. It is now almost a year since the Future Jobs Fund stopped giving young people a job guarantee after a year of unemployment. "The next priority should be areas of the country experiencing the combination of both high unemployment and a low number of vacancies, while the prospects of those over 50 and unemployed for more than a year are also of serious concern. "The longer someone is unemployed, the less likely they are to ever return to work. Being out of work for more than a year can have a scarring effect, making it harder to get a job as well as having a negative impact on one's health and well-being. This means that even when employment starts to pick up again, they will find it hard to compete with other jobseekers and could find themselves permanently shut out of the jobs market.

Unemployment the stark reality for many Socialism is the alternative

As part of tomorrow nights lead off at Harlow Socialist party I thought I’d give a brief over look of unemployment, the facts, the causes and the long term effects of unemployment. Currently there are 2.5 million people officially out of work in Great Britain with a million of those being young people. Unemployment statistics published show that the number of people who have been unemployed for more than one year is up 27,000 in the last three months, reaching a total of 887,000. The number unemployed for more than two years is 428,000, up 5,000. 'Back to work' schemes contracted out under the 'work programme' to companies such as A4e - which, despite being stripped of one this week, still holds government welfare contracts worth tens of millions of pounds - are supposed to help people who have been out of work for long periods. The figures also reveal that there are almost six unemployed people for every job vacancy in our economy. The number of vacancies fell by 7,000 to 457,000 in the three months to April. While employment in general increased, the number in full-time employment fell by 13,000 to 21 million. The number who work part-time but want full-time work was up 44,000 in the last three months to 1.3 million - a 149,000 increase since last year. There are also 590,000 people doing temporary work who want a permanent job, up 10,000 in the last quarter. A slight fall in the most recent set of unemployment figures hides the reality facing millions. The fall has only occurred because of an increase in part-time work. And the number of people claiming unemployment benefit is still going up. By the end of 2012 almost a million people will have been out of work for more than a year. There was a slight fall in the number of young people unemployed as well. And yet more young people than ever are now long-term unemployed - showing the failure of the Con-Dems' 'youth contract', aimed specifically at this group. Recent figures showed that the number of unemployed young people across Europe has increased by 50% since 2008. The long term affects of unemployment are staggering if you are long term unemployed as a young person you are far more likely to face unemployment again at an older age. The mental side of unemployment is huge too the number of people who are diagnosed with depression or other such illnesses is shocking when you look at the long term unemployed. We can also look at the under employed. The part time workers who are working part time jobs many taking on two or more just to make a decent wage to live off of. These workers are those who are class as under employed as wish to work longer hours for better pay but are not able to due to lack of jobs. The Socialist Party demands: • An end to job cuts, save our public services • Scrap all slave-labour workfare schemes, a day's pay for a day's work • A minimum wage of £8 an hour for all • Open the books - when company’s claim they can't afford to keep workers on, they must show us where the money has gone! • Massive investment in a programme of public works to create socially useful jobs See www.youthfightforjobs.com As unemployment soars Britain will still have the longest working week in the European Union. The previous New Labour government and now the con-deems today have consistently fought for the right to opt out of EU laws limiting the working week to a maximum of 48 hours. More than four million workers in Britain work longer than that each week in order to make ends meet. This is the lunacy of capitalism - millions thrown on the scrapheap while others work their fingers to the bone. By introducing a 35-hour week with no loss of pay - in other words sharing out the work - it would be possible to dramatically decrease the number of unemployed while simultaneously improving the quality of life of working class people. If this was combined with a massive increase in public services it would be possible to eliminate unemployment. This would allow us to develop a vastly better public transport system, build more housing, and train and hire more teachers, doctors and nursing staff. For example, up and down the country building workers are being laid off. Meanwhile there are five million people, two million households, who are desperate for social housing. Why can't the two be matched up with a massive high quality, affordable, council house building programme? This idea immediately raises the need to nationalise the major building companies under democratic control.

Coping with a disability and busting the myths

As people may or may not know I am registered as disabled being registered as blind. I have less than 30% vision I lost my central vision due to a rare genetic disease back in 2004. Life isn’t easy for me I’ll admit that. I make the best of a situation and do as much as I possibly can. Hearing the constant news of benefit scroungers and benefit fraud it worries me deeply that I’ll be next to see my benefits cut or ended. Ok I do work part time as there isn’t any more work I could do where I am at I would love to work full time but there simply isn’t the work for me as yet.

I decided to join the socialist party as I firmly believe they have the best ideas and the best strategy to creating a better fairer society for tee many not just the few. Other political parties talk a good game but no one puts their words and theories into action quite like the socialist party they do as they say and I’m glad to be apart of them.

But this government wish to make us disabled people including myself who are blind to pay for a crisis caused by the rich reckless bankers who gambled huge amounts of money more than you or I could ever possibly imagine and lost. We as ordinary working class people and the middle class lets not forget have to pay for their mistakes in the way of austerity measures.

I get by on little money any money I do get be that in a wage from work or benefits from the government are mostly given to my mum who I still live with due to the fact there is little chance of me moving out anytime soon as the lack of affordable housing out there in my area. I do not live the high life and I certainly don’t have it easy. The Tories and new labour before them have constantly attacked disabled people using various different terms such as scroungers, festering, work shy, drain on society, cost we cannot afford and the media have brought into this echoing these attacks in the daily press. Many people who read these papers and subscribe to such media take this in as gospel but I would like to shatter these illusions if I can and tell it how it is for me being disabled and a benefit claimer.

Sheffield socialist party have produced this myth buster which I hope they don’t mind me sharing with you all its fantastic. If this piece made it into the mass media or a opposition used this to defeat the lies we could really get somewhere as it is Labour buy into the scroungers idea too unfortunately something we must fight against too as they are no better.

The welfare state has led to a 'something for nothing' culture? IT'S A LIE. There are over 8 million people receiving benefits in this country. There are more people IN WORK who get benefits than not working. 90% of all housing benefit claimants are IN WORK. The Welfare state is actually a massive state subsidy to business which enables it to pay poverty wages and charge exorbitant rents.

You're all sick of paying a huge swathe of chavs to lay about watching Jeremy Kyle all day?
IT'S A LIE. Less than 5,000 people, out of a population of 60 million, have been on Job Seekers Allowance for more than 5 years. Historically, whenever jobs get created, they always get filled. The idea that there is a vast horde of the work-shy is a myth.
Living on benefits is a lifestyle choice?
IT'S A LIE.
More than 80% of benefit claimants are aged over 35. The vast majority of unemployed claimants have worked, and paid taxes, for years and are now on benefits due to redundancy, sickness, disability or having to care for someone. Millions more are receiving benefits due to poverty wages.
People won't work because benefits are too high?
IT'S A LIE. Average benefits amount to £3,400 a year. These people are living in poverty. Since 1997, due to various Government actions, the value of benefits has fallen sharply year on year in real terms. People on benefits are far worse off now than in the last 30 years.

People should get off their arses and look for work?
IT'S A LIE. When Iain Duncan Smith suggested the jobless in Merthyr Tydfil should get on a bus to Cardiff to find work, Merthyr had 43 people for every job vacancy. Problem was, Cardiff already had nine unemployed people for every job vacancy. The jobs just don't exist. In 2010, there was 1 million more unemployed than there were job vacancies.

Benefit cheats are bankrupting the country?
IT'S A LIE. Benefit fraud does amount to about £1.5 billion a year. However, £16 billion goes UNCLAIMED every year. Meanwhile, the amount of tax lost through avoidance and evasion is a whopping £120 billion a year. ( And don't give me the crap about avoidance being legal, the truth is, it shouldn't be. Not one of the major parties will openly state the real truth. The biggest causes of poverty in this country are lack of jobs, poverty wages and part time work. All the parties have social policies that they KNOW are based upon outright lies, lies that are allowing a whole section of society to be vilified as heartless people cast around to find a victim upon which to blame all this countries woes


The money is out there for us all to live comfortably I say lets tax the rich and bring their wealth into public ownership to benefit the many not just the few.
With thanks to Sheffield socialist party for the exert on myth busting benefits.

Casual part time work on the rise in capitalist Britain

Part-time workers now account for nearly three in 10 of the British workforce, the latest statistics have shown.
The number of people working part-time hours rose by 143,000 in the three months to August to reach 7.96m, the highest figure since comparable records began in 1992, the figures by the Office for National Statistics have revealed. Part-time working accounted for 27.3pc of total employment, with the number of people in working rising by 178,000 on the quarter to 29.16m.

A record 1.14m employees and self-employed people were working part-time because they could not find a full job, up 65,000 on the quarter, the ONS said.

In 2011 in capitalist Britain this is the state we find ourselves. Its no coincidence that workers in part time jobs has shot up like this in recent years. To a employer they are cheaper to employ and require less incentives to work in their view. They are often people who have been unemployed and are desperate for any job just to pay their bills. Many workers i know now are having to take 2 or 3 part time jobs in a week just to get anywhere near the level they need to pay their monthly and weekly bills.

We hear a lot about the unemployment figures but i thought i'd put it back out there that although there is growing mass unemployment in Britain those who are still in work face a very tough time of it. With peoples hours being cut, pay frozen or even cut and even then part time workers are seen as some of the first and easiest to get rid of in the eyes of a employer when costs need to be saved as they put it.

Part-time jobs are hit hardest as companies use the flexibility of these contracts to reduce costs. With the economy expected to remain weak for some time and the spending cuts still being implemented, unemployment is expected to continue increasing.

It is a tough time to be a worker but i sense that being a part time employee myself we will be looked at at either being employed to save cost as we dont work as long as a full timer or let go first when cuts are looked for as we may not have been at our work for as long so havent built up so much of a pay off offer perhaps.

Many women are in part time work having many had children find it easier to ease themselves back into work that way of going part time first of all and we of course know women out number men in the public sector which of course are under the greatest threat by cuts and pension reforms.

It is key we dont forget any part of the working class employed or not, part time or full time, public or private sector. We are all workers and are all facing a unprecedented attack on our living standards and take home pay. It is estimated that by 2015 our average take home pay will be back to what it was in 2001. So if capitalisms only answer is to take us backwards it is time we all stood up and brought a end to this backward exploititive system of greed over peoples needs.