Doubt on coalition's '500,000 new jobs' claim

Greenst

Be interesting to see how they'll hide the 16000 that have/will lose their jobs due to the recent retail closures ???

chewmylegoff

ruggedtoast wrote: »

If you want to know how bad the job situation is in the UK you just have to try and find one.

Few people are hiring, salaries seem to be falling back to 2006 levels and people who have jobs are clinging onto them.

The jobs page in my local paper isnt even an entire page anymore, and a third of what is there is people advertising themselves.

I am in he middle of trying to recruit an admin person for £25-32k in laaaandan. We got 44 applications, of those only three managed to send a CV without any spelling and grammar errors on it. So basically an ability to spell and turn up is going to be rewarded with at least £25k.

DecentLivingWage

Greenst wrote: »

Be interesting to see how they'll hide the 16000 that have/will lose their jobs due to the recent retail closures ???

Yes, interesting to see how 17.000 retail and 9,500 armed forces can 'quietly re-absorbed' into benefit slave jobs - too many of them. I remember the days when politicians used to at least turn up at the works and at least make some attempt to be doing something!

Coalition attitude is that citizens and their young families are ... expendable!

Entertainer

grizzly1911 wrote: »

The statitical numbers are no doubt in accordance with the "rules" what is probably more significant is the type and mix of employment and unemployment.

Lower paid/low skilled, part time/temporary jobs v. permanent jobs with advancement opportunities. Leading to reduced tax revenue and higher welfare coasts for the same employment levels. 0 hour contracts.

Growing numbers of economically inactive people who don't register as unemployed. in the first place.

All of whom are included in the Labour Force Survey official unemployment figure of 2.5M. "Not registering" refers to the claimant count which is not used as the official figure. The LFS surveys 100,000 people and asks them if they have applied for one job in the last four weeks i.e they are economically active. It will include a cross section of people like self employed people or even people who've been sanctioned who may not be on the claimant count.

grizzly1911

Entertainer wrote: »

All of whom are included in the Labour Force Survey official unemployment figure of 2.5M. "Not registering" refers to the claimant count which is not used as the official figure. The LFS surveys 100,000 people and asks them if they have applied for one job in the last four weeks i.e they are economically active. It will include a cross section of people like self employed people or even people who've been sanctioned who may not be on the claimant count.

Why do they give two sets of data ?

One for 2.5m and one for 9m.


Labour Market
For August to October 2012:
•
The employment rate for those aged from 16 to 64 was 71.2 per cent, up 0.1 on May to July
2012 and up 0.9 on a year earlier. There were 29.60 million people in employment aged 16 and
over, up 40,000 on May to July 2012 and up 499,000 on a year earlier.
•
The unemployment rate was 7.8 per cent of the economically active population, down 0.2 on May
to July 2012 and down 0.5 on a year earlier. There were 2.51 million unemployed people, down
82,000 on May to July 2012 and down 128,000 on a year earlier.
•
The inactivity rate for those aged from 16 to 64 was 22.6 per cent, up 0.1 on May to July 2012
but down 0.6 on a year earlier. There were 9.07 million economically inactive people aged from
16 to 64, up 60,000 on May to July 2012 but down 249,000 on a year earlier.

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_287888.pdf

Shakethedisease

Generali wrote: »

Doesn't the ONS use the ILO method for describing employment and unemployment? If not to use the internationally agreed definition of employment and unemployment then what definition should be used? Let's be absolutely clear; there is no 'massaging' here as the UK's definition of employment (that is to use the current ILO definition) has not changed.

Should the ONS/ British Government push for a new standard definition or push ahead with creating a new statistic which isn't comparable internationally?

Lets not forget that unemployment figures are accurate to about 100,000 people (CBA to link again, it's on the ONS website) so the numbers are only just within statistical significance.

I wonder whether the Tories' main claim, that employment is at an all time high is still accurate. My guess is that it is hence The Guardian obfuscating and the OP dropping the Guardian's original claim entirely and concentrating on the 'controversy' alone.

The Guardian breaks down the figures here :-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2013/jan/15/employment-figures-how-unpaid-get-counted?intcmp=239

and here for those interested :-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/jan/15/uk-jobs-soar-real?intcmp=239

As for your belief that employment is at an 'all time high' is accurate in the UK currently ? Surely you jest ? :rotfl:

I didn't drop the Guardian's original claim. And the controversy over a government ( any government ) trumpeting and high fiving over 500,000 'new jobs' being created this year... while counting 100's of 1000's of those on JSA, fortnightly career meetings and those on workfare.. was entirely the point of my post.

The result is tens of thousands of strange cases. Take, for example, an unemployed recent graduate who has been claiming jobseeker's allowance for about six months. He relies on his unemployment benefit to live, but is enrolled in the government's unpaid work experience scheme for eight weeks at a local supermarket.
According to the official figures, he is employed, despite being on benefits. In more extreme cases, people enrolled on the work programme for the long-term unemployed could potentially be counted as employed, merely for being on government training courses, which, Paul Bivand of the Centre for Social and Economic Inclusion says, can be, at times, just a careers meeting....
...The problem comes when these figures are seized upon by ministers – even, on occasion, David Cameron and George Osborne – to boast of job creation:

The results were eye-opening. It turns out that on top of the 166,000 in government training and work schemes counted as employed (154,000 when not seasonally adjusted) there were another 57,000 who were also on such schemes but hidden away among general employees. This figure has almost doubled from the year before.
This gives us a total of 214,000 people (non seasonally adjusted) who are being counted as employed but are actually on government training and back-to-work schemes.

Entertainer

grizzly1911 wrote: »

Why do they give two sets of data ?

One for 2.5m and one for 9m.


Labour Market
For August to October 2012:
•
The employment rate for those aged from 16 to 64 was 71.2 per cent, up 0.1 on May to July
2012 and up 0.9 on a year earlier. There were 29.60 million people in employment aged 16 and
over, up 40,000 on May to July 2012 and up 499,000 on a year earlier.
•
The unemployment rate was 7.8 per cent of the economically active population, down 0.2 on May
to July 2012 and down 0.5 on a year earlier. There were 2.51 million unemployed people, down
82,000 on May to July 2012 and down 128,000 on a year earlier.
•
The inactivity rate for those aged from 16 to 64 was 22.6 per cent, up 0.1 on May to July 2012
but down 0.6 on a year earlier. There were 9.07 million economically inactive people aged from
16 to 64, up 60,000 on May to July 2012 but down 249,000 on a year earlier.

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_287888.pdf

Because the 9 million, as Generali has already alluded to, includes all kinds of people who are of working age but who are economically inactive and are not looking for work such as students taking gap years, mothers looking after children, disabled and ill people, carers of disabled people, people who've taken early retirement etc.

To be unemployed you have to be actually looking for a job and unable to find one, testing the labour market, which is why the LFS asks if you've applied for one job in the last four weeks (hardly an onerous jobsearch requirement). That can include not just sending a cv but registering with an employment agency, going online to look etc.

To put it in context, the participation rate of 71.2% is getting near its all time high; you are not going to get anywhere close to 100% of the working age population wanting a job.

Generali

grizzly1911 wrote: »

Yes I have looked a certain subsets of statistics both from the ONS and various economic platforms.

Between August to October 2007 and August to October 2012:
•
The number of people in full-time employment
fell
by 421,000,
•
The number of people in part-time employment
increased
by 709,000,
•
The number of unemployed people
increased
by 879,000,
•
The number of economically inactive people, aged from 16 to 64,
fell
by 52,000.

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_287888.pdf

I did provide you with another link on the long term increase in the economically inactive.

So are you saying it isn't happening. It seems to be widely accepted in the UK media and a number of posters/threads here.

Quite happy to grow trawling but are you certain it isn't the case .

On re-reading, my post comes across as needlessly aggressive. It wasn't my intent and I'm sorry.

My point, made inelegantly as well as boorishly, is that the reasons for categorizing people as employed or unemployed as well as economically inactive are complex.

Take youth unemployment for example. On the face of it, youth unemployment rates are through the roof however it's complex: far more kids go to Uni than was the case 25 years ago for example. Uni students are almost all excluded from the denominator of potentially unemployed. That will tend to push up the unemployment rate massively.

This isn't to dismiss that there is a problem, clearly the UK has faced tough times since 2008 at least and is likely to continue to do so for a while. Misrepresenting the scale of the problem helps nobody.

DecentLivingWage

Shakethedisease wrote: »

The Guardian breaks down the figures here :-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2013/jan/15/employment-figures-how-unpaid-get-counted?intcmp=239

and here for those interested :-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/jan/15/uk-jobs-soar-real?intcmp=239

As for your belief that employment is at an 'all time high' is accurate in the UK currently ? Surely you jest ? :rotfl:

I didn't drop the Guardian's original claim. And the controversy over a government ( any government ) trumpeting and high fiving over 500,000 'new jobs' being created this year... while counting 100's of 1000's of those on JSA, fortnightly career meetings and those on workfare.. was entirely the point of my post.

I agree - 'employment' should not be defined as those being 'paid' by the state , (benefits) but those paid by an employer!

I wonder what the true 'Employed And Paid By An Employer' figures are after the 40,000 jobs we just lost?

nicko33

chewmylegoff wrote: »

We got 44 applications, of those only three managed to send a CV without any spelling and grammar errors on it.

Only 3 out of 44 were the product of the UK education system (with it's ever rising GCSE and A-Level results)