2,029,000 on the dole

Graham_Devon

nickmason wrote: »

That's interesting. Have you got any more details?


Is this true? I've found the self-employment route more and more difficult for individuals - I thought the gov was trying to push people towards being PAYE.

Can you substantiate?

To the first part, the only details I can give you, is that you are financially penalised for working over 16 hours a week on various forms of benefits. Therefore, there are heaps of workers working up to and no more than 16 hours a week.

It's been discussed on MSE loads of times. And to be fair, there are loads who would like to work more, but when they will lose out financially for doing so because of the system, you cannot really blame them for only working upto the 16 hour limit.

All these 16 hour part time workers are classed as employed, whereas actually, they are only employed maybe 2 full days or 3 half days a week, and the rest of their income comes from the state. This simply did not exist when unemployment was 3 million, not in the guise it does now. So one job now, employs, on average more people, so more are kept employed, by one job.

Like here. We have 36 people here. But only 2 full timers. We really only need 14 staff. We employ however, 36, to fill the 14 vacancies, simply because no one wants full time, it penalises them. It also works for us in some ways, but actually creates a nightmare in other ways.

Going back to 1990 when a few will in situe here, and they only employed 12 full time staff. nothings changed really apart from we now have 36 staff.

As for the self employment, you have loads of painters and decorators, brick layers etc, all contracted in and paid a sum to do the job. This has risen dramatically in the last decade and something labour was very proud of. For those of us self employed however, we are entitled to less and less.

It's why we started out with self assesment etc, because so many more were being encouraged to work this way.

mitchaa

I was expecting much more than this especially seeing how many redundancies that have been announced in the last 6 months or so.

Looking at the table below, there were roughly 1.65m unemployed before all this began in the summer of 07 so it has only risen by 380k or so in the 18mths since then.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7947766.stm

Why do the media not report it like this rather than the concentrate on the headline 2m figure? So far this recession has put 400k people in the dole queue would be a much more accurate report (400k/30m = 1.33%)

Additionally, with the long term average being around 1.55m, what portion actually wanted to work? Take out the genuine workshy, alcoholics, drug abusers, and see what portion of the longterm 1.55m that were willing to work.

At xmas when all the doom and gloom was announced i was seriously expecting around 2.5m by around this time.

Perhaps there are but people are just not claiming?

Generali

PasturesNew wrote: »

It's funny how your memory plays tricks when you get old, I recall it being from 1979/1980, but I could well be wrong... it could equally have occurred in my first 3 years of working.

I don't keep notes, just some random memories.

According to the ONS, unemployment rose above 3,000,000 in 1984-86. It didn't rise above 3,000,000 in the 1990s recession so we're both wrong.

The unemployment rate rose above 10% in 1982 and remained there until 1987.

Unemployment is a lagging indicator - GDP fell in 1980 and 1981, only rising above 1979 levels in 1983. Unemployment remained a severe problem until 1987 (if unemployment > 10% is the definition of 'severe' as I believe).

Using the last 2 recessions as templates, we can expect unemployment to continue to rise for 2 years after real GDP returns to it's previous peak. That looks to be some way off.

Emigration and reverse immigration look (anecdotally - official figures on this are hopeless) to be reducing the impact of reduced growth on unemployment for now. It'll be interesting to see how long that lasts - would you rather be unemployed in Warsaw or Walsall? I suspect British benefits are more generous than Polish ones - for example, I believe Polish benefits are time limited whereas British ones are not.

Graham_Devon

Interesting point you raise about the polish Generali.

I don't believe they count for the unemployed figures though? They don't count for the JSA figures unless they have been here for x amount of years. The way they count unemployment is those taking unemployment benefits. So the polish would simply not be counted, unless of course they had been here x numbers of years.

We've had a hell of a lot of polish leave though over the last year, the numbers have reduced dramtically of those living and working here. Which again, only helps bring the numbers of unemployed down, as they would have been unemployed if they stayed here, and secondly, if they could claim (which most can't, I see a LOT of imigration passes etc which all state "no recourse to public funds".

Generali

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Interesting point you raise about the polish Generali.

I don't believe they count for the unemployed figures though? They don't count for the JSA figures unless they have been here for x amount of years. The way they count unemployment is those taking unemployment benefits. So the polish would simply not be counted, unless of course they had been here x numbers of years.

We've had a hell of a lot of polish leave though over the last year, the numbers have reduced dramtically of those living and working here. Which again, only helps bring the numbers of unemployed down, as they would have been unemployed if they stayed here, and secondly, if they could claim (which most can't, I see a LOT of imigration passes etc which all state "no recourse to public funds".

I think it's 2 years.

PS I'm not meaning to pick on Polish people, it's just an obvious group which seems to have come to the UK in large numbers and be quitting again in large numbers. There are loads of French people in London - London is the 6th largest French city by population of French people. French benefits are pretty generous though so I would expect many French people to return home although clearly not all.

Graham_Devon

I don't know if this website has a bias or anything like that, but makes interesting reading and the reasons are sound enough and viable, and what actually does happen (My mum for instance, is unemployed, but can't claim due to savings, therefore she does not count as unemployed, but she lost her job). She's one number that's missed from the unemployment statistics, but she wouldn't have been when it was 3 million.

http://www.economicshelp.org/blog/unemployment/the-true-level-of-unemployment-in-uk/

And this one, which looks at those who are unemployed, but are not for the statistics...
http://www.economicshelp.org/blog/unemployment/disguised-unemployment/

kennyboy66_2

Generali wrote: »

According to the ONS, unemployment rose above 3,000,000 in 1984-86. It didn't rise above 3,000,000 in the 1990s recession so we're both wrong.

The unemployment rate rose above 10% in 1982 and remained there until 1987.

Unemployment is a lagging indicator - GDP fell in 1980 and 1981, only rising above 1979 levels in 1983. Unemployment remained a severe problem until 1987 (if unemployment > 10% is the definition of 'severe' as I believe).

Using the last 2 recessions as templates, we can expect unemployment to continue to rise for 2 years after real GDP returns to it's previous peak. That looks to be some way off.

Emigration and reverse immigration look (anecdotally - official figures on this are hopeless) to be reducing the impact of reduced growth on unemployment for now. It'll be interesting to see how long that lasts - would you rather be unemployed in Warsaw or Walsall? I suspect British benefits are more generous than Polish ones - for example, I believe Polish benefits are time limited whereas British ones are not.

Unemployment went as high as 3.37 million in 1986.

In fact it was above 2.9 million from 1982 until Q2 1987.

The rise in unemployment (at least in 1982) had very little to do with the Government stopping supporting loss making industries (although British Steel lost large numbers of jobs in 1980-82) and was more to do with the disasterous interest rate policy which led to a grossly over valued £ (went as high as $2.40).

The squeezing out inflation was also a bit of a myth - 10.1% in May 1979, 10 years later in May 1989 inflation was 8%.
It was the much maligned Major government that really squeezed inflation (and public spending for that matter).


Unemployment peaked again at 3.03 million in 1993

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/statbase/TSDdownload2.asp

Migrants from the last 10 countries to join the EU are hardly encouraged to claim benefits. They have had to have worked for at least 12 months in the UK to claim any benefits and are largely well qualified and young (often graduates).
Unlikely candidates to be getting used to a life on incapacity benefit.

Generali

kennyboy66 wrote: »

The squeezing out inflation was also a bit of a myth - 10.1% in May 1979, 10 years later in May 1989 inflation was 8%.

Squeezing out inflation wasn't a myth.

The reason inflation was high again in May 1989 was because Lawson cut taxes and interest rates in advance of the 1987 election and at the same time tried to shadow the DEM in an attempt to bounce Thatcher into joining the ERM. The policy led to elevated levels of inflation.

Ok, unemployment squeaked above 3,000,000 in the 1990s for a very limited time. I was looking at quarterly data which didn't show that. You link is broken BTW (ONS links are rubbish - not your fault!).

Andrew64

I don't know if it was a factor in previous recessions, but this time round - as well as all the unemployed - there will also be a large number of people of people on short time, 3 and 4 day weeks, with corresponding pay cuts. Semi-employment on top of unemployment.

kennyboy66_2

Generali wrote: »

Squeezing out inflation wasn't a myth.

The reason inflation was high again in May 1989 was because Lawson cut taxes and interest rates in advance of the 1987 election and at the same time tried to shadow the DEM in an attempt to bounce Thatcher into joining the ERM. The policy led to elevated levels of inflation.

Ok, unemployment squeaked above 3,000,000 in the 1990s for a very limited time. I was looking at quarterly data which didn't show that. You link is broken BTW (ONS links are rubbish - not your fault!).

Maybe " a bit of exaggeration" rather than "a bit of a myth".

Inflation went below 4.5% in only 4 times in the 36 months between 1983 and 1985