UK Unemployment falls by less than expected

chucky

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Until we reach the bottom who has any idea how many people will become unemployed?

We still have another 12-18 months at least of actual layoffs and redundancies.

To name a couple of as examples, Lloyds and Santander have a few more jobs to shed yet.

we will hit the bottom, be out of recession and unemployment will probably still be rising.

you're right there will be a good few more casualties. not sure about your comments about Lloyds and Santander; job losses would be due to mergers and takeovers rather than recession.

lemonjelly

kennyboy66 wrote: »

As everyone was has enough NI payments can claim JSA, I don't know why people wouldn't claim. £60 a week or whatever.

Those who don't are probably burying their head in the sand.

Not as straightforward as this I'm afraid...

If you have paid sufficient national insurance in the 2 tax years before signing on, then you'll get JSA for a maximum of 26 weeks (based upon your contributions). In this case, you'll get the JSA for yourself - no additional amounts for any family. This is contribution based JSA.

Anything else depends on your income & savings. So, if your partner works 24 or more hours a week, you don't qualify, & any income they get is deducted from what you'd get.

zappahey

Graham_Devon wrote: »

I'm not talking about the public servants.

I'm talking of the "clientel".

I didn't think a smiley was necessary, but here you are

Jonbvn

dopester wrote: »

OK - but you're dreaming if you don't think such low interest rates aren't accompanied by massive capital loss in value over the course of 12 months, 24 months ect.

Granted that price drops have to be considered if our house was a pure investment, which it is not. However, massive capital loss is overstating the situation.

Furthermore with an STR fund capital preservation and getting a decent return are issues to be considered.

Cannon_Fodder

chucky wrote: »

not sure about your comments about Lloyds and Santander; job losses would be due to mergers and takeovers rather than recession.

A little disingenuous...you well know that those "mergers and takeovers" are a direct result of the credit crunch, not some brilliant "move" upon the competition, or sharing of "synergies" for the good of two businesses, or whatever...

If big chunks of jobs are lost in the name of rationalisation, to remove "over-supply" from the banking industry, with taxpayers effectively footing the redundancy bill AND paying the JSA afterwards, something has not been thought through...

chucky

Cannon_Fodder wrote: »

A little disingenuous...you well know that those "mergers and takeovers" are a direct result of the credit crunch, not some brilliant "move" upon the competition, or sharing of "synergies" for the good of two businesses, or whatever...

If big chunks of jobs are lost in the name of rationalisation, to remove "over-supply" from the banking industry, with taxpayers effectively footing the redundancy bill AND paying the JSA afterwards, something has not been thought through...

not intended to be disingenious - Santander and Lloyds may/probably not have needed job cuts if they hadn't taken over Abbey/A&L or HBOS. lots of duplication of process and chasing the same customers due to these mergers.

it was directed at companies that had had drops in sales or production i.e. the car industry etc

chewmylegoff

Graham_Devon wrote: »

So it's a good positive thing we are seeing the second highest rate in unemployment, becaus it's not the highest?

On that assumption, unless we hit rock bottom in every measure, every single thing is a good thing, including people loosing 80% of their pensions, cus they could have lost 82% and so on.

point i was trying to make is that the particular number they use doesn't make much difference to the core underlying issue - it's not right to just dismiss this news as irrelevant because they are not using the correct absolute figures. the rate of increase of unemployment month on month has reduced, fact. as you rightly say, it's not as much of a good thing as unemployment decreasing, but it's still better than expected, and better than last month. it's still bad in absolute terms, as unemployment has increased, hence my final sentence.

anyway, the figures for one month, regardless of the particular measure, don't mean much in the long run.

pfpf

Graham_Devon wrote: »

To be honest, I can't blame them. Job centres are horrible places. Not because of the place itself, but the people hanging around in them I'm sorry to say.

i agree 100%. my OH lost her job late January and finally returned to work last friday (hooray :j). she hated the whole claiming and JC experiences having never claimed any benefits in the 19 years since she left school, all of which have been spent working. it didnt stop some of the JC process/staff treating her like scum, but thats another matter.

the ONLY reason she/we went through all that was because we had been "prudent" enough to have a mortgage insurance policy which to be fair has been excellent from initial claim to monthly payments with no delays/issues whatsoever.

the thing is, she could,nt claim the insurance that we paid for without getting the JC to fill out a form each month, which would only be done if she was "signing on".

she wouldnt have claimed JSA, but it was way to a means, go figure.

Cannon_Fodder

kennyboy66 wrote: »

I suspect that the ILO measure of a quarterly increase of 232k may be more like
95k, 80k, 57k for each but its a pure guesstimate to tie that in with the claimant count.

Last months, "April", 232,000 quarterly might have been broken down into months as 95,000, 80,000, 57,000 monthly...

If so, this months, "May", 281,000 quarterly would be 80,000, 57,000,.... 144,000...ouch!

Even switching them round, as the ILO does not lend itself to easy monthly comparison, i.e. 57k, 80k, 95k, would then mean 106,000 for the latest month in the sequence...

(would be helpful to have the real monthly numbers, if anyone has a source, though I don't think they bother for ILO)


As the April figure had been an improvement on March, of 244,000, this was one of the green shoots being bandied around. How do we go about undoing a month's worth of green shoot stories?

I don't expect pointing this out will be considered anything more than "doom-mongering", rather than simply stating the reality of the situation.

kennyboy66_2

Cannon_Fodder wrote: »

Last months, "April", 232,000 quarterly might have been broken down into months as 95,000, 80,000, 57,000 monthly...

If so, this months, "May", 281,000 quarterly would be 80,000, 57,000,.... 144,000...ouch!

.

As that theory is out the window, perhaps the discrepancy between ILO (which I tend to think is more reliable) and claimant count is that many younger people may be excluded from JSA if they have insufficient NI history.

All in all, pretty horrendous.