Unemployment down 57,000

angrypirate

quantic wrote: »

I'm all for a genuine decline in unemployment, and I'm not calling them liars but I would love to see an honest break down of the 9.04 million economically inactive...

Do expats fall into the economically inactive? What about people living in the UK but working abroad and able to rack up enough days out of the country to allow them not to pay tax? Presumably economically inactive also includes unemployed people who have too much in savings to allow them to claim benefits?

nomoreboomandbust

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

That is indeed good news. :beer:

Although it's still a good million or more higher than where it should be, thanks to austerity....

and uncontrolled immigration

Generali

angrypirate wrote: »

Do expats fall into the economically inactive? What about people living in the UK but working abroad and able to rack up enough days out of the country to allow them not to pay tax? Presumably economically inactive also includes unemployed people who have too much in savings to allow them to claim benefits?

If you email:

[EMAIL="classifications.helpdesk@ons.gov.uk"]classifications.helpdesk@ons.gov.uk[/EMAIL]

They'll explain the definitions to you. IME they love to answer technical questions.

As an aside, if you speak to someone from the ONS for more than about 1 minute about stats you'll see why the output is highly trustable.

antrobus

quantic wrote: »

I'm all for a genuine decline in unemployment, and I'm not calling them liars but I would love to see an honest break down of the 9.04 million economically inactive...

You can probably find one if you look for it.

The "economically inactive" consist of students (there's a couple of million of them about), housewives, long term sick, and people who've opted for early retirement.

CLAPTON

nomoreboomandbust wrote: »

and uncontrolled immigration

don't be silly

Hamish has repeatedly shown this to be false.

Hamish knows there is an economic law that ONLY applies to the UK that says each and evey immigrant produces exactly one extra job;
so if e.g. £1million Bulgarian/Romanians arrive in January they instantly produce £1million jobs.

It's a puzzle why this does apply to the native born but that's another story.

quantic

Generali wrote: »

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lms/labour-market-statistics/july-2013/table-inac01.xls

(opens in Excel)

Students = 25%
Carers & 'housewives' (m/f) = 25%
Temporary sick = 2%
Long Term sick = 23%
Discouraged workers = 1% (people who wanted to work but have given up looking)
Retired before age 64 = 15%
Other = 9%

Wonder what other is, 813,600 is a big number.

quantic

antrobus wrote: »

You can probably find one if you look for it.

The "economically inactive" consist of students (there's a couple of million of them about), housewives, long term sick, and people who've opted for early retirement.

I know that, I was more getting at the fact that the decrease in unemployment seems to be a lot about relabeling them as economically inactive instead of becoming employed.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

nomoreboomandbust wrote: »

and uncontrolled immigration

There have been 4 million working age immigrants since the last time unemployment was high in a recession.

There are currently 1.5 million fewer unemployed than at the depth of the last recession.

If immigrants steal native jobs, why don't we have an extra 4 million unemployed?

Generali

quantic wrote: »

Wonder what other is, 813,600 is a big number.

You could try asking the ONS.

My guess is that a large part of that is a balancing figure, the statistical version of dark matter.

IME, statisticians go in a lot for a logic that works thusly:

We all agree that a+b = z

However, our measurements tell us that a+b < z

Therefore, we introduce a new number defined as misc/other/balancing item c

a+b+c = z

where c = z - (a+b)

A mathematician would say that you've changed the equation to:

a+b = a+b

A statistician would say that (s)he has proved his model to work by using a balancing item to remove variance and sampling bias.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

CLAPTON wrote: »

don't be silly

Hamish has repeatedly shown this to be false..

Not just me.....

The body of research and evidence confirming my position is significant.

Our results, which appear robust to different specifications, different levels of geographic aggregation, and to a number of tests, seem to confirm the lack of any impact of migration on unemployment in aggregate.

We find no association between migrant inflows and claimant unemployment.

In addition, we test for whether the impact of migration on claimant unemployment varies according to the state of the economic cycle.

We find no evidence of a more adverse effect during periods of low growth or the recent recession.

http://niesr.ac.uk/sites/default/files/publications/090112_163827.pdf

And....

A considerable body of UK evidence now exists on the impact of immigration on native labour market outcomes, particularly employment and wages.

Most of this work suggests that, on average, the impact of immigration on native residents has been small.

Virtually no published study has found any significant impact on employment or unemployment.

And just for you Clapton....

In addition to expanding labour supply, immigration can also increase the demand for labour.

Migrants expand consumer demand for goods and services.

In the medium to long run, immigration can be expected to lead to more investment.

Both effects result in greater demand for labour and thus increased wages and employment in the economy.

In other words, the number of jobs in an economy is not fixed (“the lump of labour fallacy”).

http://www.migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/briefings/labour-market-effects-immigration