Saturday, November 10, 2007
Unemployment hits over 5.3 million?
Sorry, I don't mean unemployment, I mean "joblessness". Yes, honestly, there are apparently are over 5.3 million people who are now classed as "jobless" in the UK. As Fraser Nelson has noted, the Government has dealt with the problem of mass unemployment by simply creating mass joblessness instead. It makes perfect sense really. Move millions on to a different benefit than the dole and then you can make it look like mass unemployment is a thing of the past.
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12 comments:
It's even worse than you think.
The National Audit Office recently slipped out the fact that the government makes 22 million regular benefit payments.
They also stated that one third of UK households now get most of their income from benefits.
With a third of the adult population benefit dependent and 20% of the working population working for Gordon, we're rapidly heading for a situation where half of adults are financially dependent on the tax paid by the other half.
A bunch of those are on the sick, aren't they? Not sure that they'd be sensibly counted as 'unemployed', given that they've been judged as not being capable of work.
Well that's the problem actually Adam. The incapacity benefit claimants have rocketed as people have been movd on to it. It's estimated that a million or so of those claimants are not actually incapcitated and could work.
I can speak from personal experience in my extended family of how the problem works. An extended relative is in the building trade. Doctor signs them off on to incapacity benefit saying that they cannot work. Now this technically true in that because of their problem, to do with balance and heights, that they can;t work on a building site doing their trade.
However, they could sit on a till in a supermarket, deliver mail, or all manner of other jobs. But every few weeks the doctor keeps him signed off.
He wants to work as well btw, but the doctor tells him he can't. SO he has two choices, sit on his arse doing nothing, or work anyway and potentially get convicted of benefit fraud.
The system is completely screwed.
Why am I reading comments posted on the 11th October? Surely they could be a bit stale.
You're not. I just have American date format which I'd not actually noticed. Shall fix.
"He wants to work as well btw, but the doctor tells him he can't."
You seem to be blaming the doctor here. Your relative could refuse a sick note or just throw it in the bin and tell the benefits office he doesn't want to claim anymore.
I don't know the situation (obviously) but I find it hard to believe that somebody who wants to work is being forced not to by "the system".
Oh, I don't have any doubt that there's a bunch of people on the sick that shouldn't be.
Exactly how to count unemployment is always going to be contentious, but for me it should include people who don't have work but want it. People who don't have a job but aren't looking for one, I would include in the figures, at least if they are to be used as an economic measure, because their joblessness is about their context (disabled, skiving, independently wealthy, etc) and not the economy.
The issue of it being too easy to get on the sick, and stay on it, is significant, of course. I just wouldn't ever include those people in the 'unemployment' fugures because I would reserve those figures as an economic measure of whether or not people can find work. People who aren't looking, for whatever reason, I would include.
oxymoron, it is a little more complicated than the reductionist simple way I described to be honest. They have a medical condition and also gain eligibility because of some of the "special treatment" they receive. You also don;t visit the doc and ask for a cert every week once you go on such benefits and it sort of happens through the system.To be honest it won't matter soon as they will be at retirement age and it all changes then.
Adam, I wasn't saying these are unemployment is figures, that was the whole point. We now just have a huge section of society that is "jobless" instead.
Well, that's interesting in itself, the number of working aged people not working. I'd gather both figures, myself.
Incidentally, in my last post, it should have ended "wouldn't include".
Also, I don't think that they are turning 'unemployment' into 'joblessness' as a political ploy when the numbers are so much higher.
Good post- something that advances distrust in the political process is the way that all parties and I think the Tories were guilty of this in the nineties have tended to make the calculation of unemployment more and more opaque. One of the key things that all governments ought to do is keep and publish accurate and useful figures so that we the electors can be aware of what they are up to.
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