The Polls - Labour Lead At 14 - Is It The Economy?

CLAPTON

BertieUK wrote: »

I agree fully with what you are saying in your examples, it then suits both employers and their staff.

When stats are released it would be better if they were broken down to show the full breakdown of full/part time figures. Occasionally I have seen the breakdown made but not often.

surely the statistics breakdwon is published; the media don't always choose to publ;ish the full details

Wookster

grizzly1911 wrote: »

If only they did look for risks and sort out the long term problems.

Endeavouring to balance the books may help mitigate some risks but others will grow elsewhere because they are not dealing with the long term problems.

The sun may not shine for ever but it is certainly going to become a harder winter.

At the moment the government are looking at a few risks, principally the deficit, education and the welfare system, but little else.

Labour did nothing, and indeed presided over a significant worsening of existing problems, therefore I am of the view that the current lot are better.

For a country as indebted as the UK, an interest rate rise/ currency crisis would be catastrophic. Perhaps Generali could elaborate a bit more on that than I could.

coastline

BertieUK wrote: »

I agree fully with what you are saying in your examples, it then suits both employers and their staff.

When stats are released it would be better if they were broken down to show the full breakdown of full/part time figures. Occasionally I have seen the breakdown made but not often.

The problem we've got today developed in the late 1960's when advances in technology hit our main industries.
UK companies have moved abroad and job losses have totalled millions...even efficient workforces have fallen.
We've gone from under 1 million unemployed to 2.5m today but millions of others fall into other categories...
3m are on sickness benefits...2m at Uni...any many more early retired.Theres something between 7-9m people available or looking for work..
No government is going to solve this without the help of the people and business.We need a phased in shorter working week and simply employ more workers...but I doubt it will happen..

Generali

BertieUK wrote: »

I agree fully with what you are saying in your examples, it then suits both employers and their staff.

When stats are released it would be better if they were broken down to show the full breakdown of full/part time figures. Occasionally I have seen the breakdown made but not often.

You're better off going to the ONS website to look at this stuff. They have quite handy primers which will give you varying levels of detail on how and why stats are produced why they are. Be careful though you can find yourself getting very geeky about it!

This is the labour market info for November:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lms/labour-market-statistics/november-2012/statistical-bulletin.html

This is the general web page for labour market stats:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/publications/all-releases.html?definition=tcm%3A77-21589

They make interesting reading if you like that kind of thing and I guess you do because you're on this forum. It quickly becomes clear as you read their stuff that they really are non-partisan. A good example is the below. Clearly it suits the current political narrative that more people are employed by the private and fewer by the public sector. If I wanted to please my Tory masters I'd have left the qualifier out of the below:

The number of people employed in the public sector was 5.66 million in June 2012, down 235,000 from March 2012. The number of people employed in the private sector in June 2012 was 23.90 million, up 471,000 from March 2012. These large quarterly movements reflect the reclassification of some educational bodies from the public sector to the private sector. See Background Notes to the September 2012 Statistical Bulletin for further details.

Excluding this reclassification, the number of people employed in the public sector fell by 39,000 between March and June and the number of people employed by the private sector increased by 275,000. Further information on public sector employment is available in the Public Sector Employment Statistical Bulletin published on 12 September 2012.

(I have reformatted for legibility)

The also give you the data you need to come to your own conclusions in many cases. For example, youth unemployment is shockingly high with a headline figure of 20.7%. However, if you include youngsters in full time education as either unemployed or not unemployed, depending on whether or not they are looking for work, rather than excluding them from the data altogether the picture changes.

Under that scenario there are 7,229,000 people aged 16-24 of whom 963,000 are unemployed (648.000 unemployed and a further 315,000 in full time education that are looking for a job).

Using those inputs the youth unemployment rate is under 13.5%, still high but rather less scandalous.

coastline

Wookster wrote: »

I think if you look at most comments, you won't find that anyone thinks the current lot are doing a great job, certainly not as good a job as could be done.

However, what the economically prudent folks here are angry about is Labour's mismanagement of the good times, leaving us with poor education, worse long-term unemployment, a bigger welfare state, a huge deficit, enormous levels of debt (infact the highest in the developed world iirc).

Now these problems need to be resolved against the backdrop of a global bear economy, making it much much much harder.

I hardly suspect that anyone thinks things will be remotely better in 2015, except for the likes of ed balls thinking "if only the chancellor would just change course" we'd be back to sustained growth. Its nonsense. Anyone peddling that sort of BS is playing you for a fool.

What people are constantly disagreeing over is the building up of debt during the 2002-2008 period which is shown in the chart below.
The economy was growing and around £150bn-£200bn was added to the national debt.When you look at the last 35 years both parties have added debt...infact we've had 30 years of growth in that period and hardly a budget surplus.
What the Tories did earlier was to run debt to GDP at 30% ...so it was capped...from 2002 onwards this cap was lifted by Labour to around 35-38% GDP.
You could argue why this was done but many will say more needed to be spent in general as things were neglected.
The financial markets didn't object..there was no run on our currency...we also kept our AAA rating..
What happened after 2008 was always going to lift our debt and no party would have changed it..
The spend of recent years has lifted ...right or wrong ..our national debt by 10-15% today...which has resulted in around £5bn more in interest payments per year.

[IMG]http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/ukgs_line.php?title=Public Net Debt&year=1990_2008&sname=&units=b&bar=0&stack=1&size=m&spending0=152.20_151.30_166.10_202.60_249.80_290.00_322.10_348.00_352.90_351.60_345.40_312.40_315.50_347.10_382.80_424.00_463.00_500.00_525.00&legend=&source=a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a[/IMG]

grizzly1911

Generali wrote: »

Clearly it suits the current political narrative that more people are employed by the private and fewer by the public sector. If I wanted to please my Tory masters I'd have left the qualifier out of the below:

Thanks Gen.

I guess the question is, how many of those now in the private sector are effectively still paid from the public purse? Has the cost to the government reduced markedly?

DecentLivingWage

coastline wrote: »

What people are constantly disagreeing over is the building up of debt during the 2002-2008 period which is shown in the chart below.
The economy was growing and around £150bn-£200bn was added to the national debt.When you look at the last 35 years both parties have added debt...infact we've had 30 years of growth in that period and hardly a budget surplus.
What the Tories did earlier was to run debt to GDP at 30% ...so it was capped...from 2002 onwards this cap was lifted by Labour to around 35-38% GDP.
You could argue why this was done but many will say more needed to be spent in general as things were neglected.
The financial markets didn't object..there was no run on our currency...we also kept our AAA rating..
What happened after 2008 was always going to lift our debt and no party would have changed it..
The spend of recent years has lifted ...right or wrong ..our national debt by 10-15% today...which has resulted in around £5bn more in interest payments per year.

[IMG]http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/ukgs_line.php?title=Public Net Debt&year=1990_2008&sname=&units=b&bar=0&stack=1&size=m&spending0=152.20_151.30_166.10_202.60_249.80_290.00_322.10_348.00_352.90_351.60_345.40_312.40_315.50_347.10_382.80_424.00_463.00_500.00_525.00&legend=&source=a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a_a[/IMG]

Sorry, just answering the education bit for a minute - my kids were all 'Labour babes' (educated thoroughly, creatively and to a high standard - all three are high achievers from comprehensive schools (a First Degree, second daughter just got a First for her 2nd yr Politics Uni essay and son predicted 4 As at A Level!) Gormless Gove is mucking about with something he doesn't understand! Out of his depth !

BertieUK

Gormless Gove is mucking about with something he doesn't understand! Out of his depth !

He is like a bull in a china shop...

Generali

grizzly1911 wrote: »

Thanks Gen.

I guess the question is, how many of those now in the private sector are effectively still paid from the public purse? Has the cost to the government reduced markedly?

I don't know the answer to your question but it brings up an interesting more general point: who actually works for the Government in these days of a bloated sprawling state?

If I work in a factory making paper clips and my boss's biggest client is the local council am I a state employee? What about if I'm a self-employed IT support person who is contracted to the village GP surgery? That sort of spending will be picked up as Government spending in the GDP data but not in things like employment data.

Thrugelmir

BertieUK wrote: »

The point I was making literally was that the Conservatives claim that they are getting more people back to work when more people are not given the chance of full time employment, my daughter was caught in this trap.

You cannot reasonably think that people can live on 16 hours a week wage, just look at the positive side instead of jumping to your conclusion.

My last proper job was around 14 years ago. Since then I've contracted. Sometimes full time, sometimes part time , sometimes for a few weeks only. To provide a continuity of income. I made one of my hobbies a part business. Not hugely profitable but helps pay the bills.

So I've seen the changes in employment first hand. Evolution of technology. Change of ownership. Business is far less stable than 20 years ago. Last permanent job I had was working for a family controlled PLC. Very stable, a job for life I thought. The business had been going for over 80 years. Along came a large US Corporation and the history was lost forever.

The world is global employment wise now. Communications and transport mean that there are multiple choices as to where Companies can be based. Politicians have little say in the matter. The UK has to develop a highly trained workforce to compete. As labourers are now 2 a penny. The likes of Apple manufacturer in the USA then ship to China for assembly. In the past 20 years. Around 2.5 billion Indians and Chinese have joined the global workforce. So those without a skill or trade may well struggle to find full employment.