The unemployment figures are coming down from the high point that followed the global financial meltdown and they are almost certainly coming down in the Devizes constituency.
That is, of course, very welcome news. But as they decline, a very different jobs market is emerging – one that poses questions for the economy in the longer term.
When the figures for April were announced last week, Claire Perry MP tweeted: “Bulgarian & Rumanians in UK jobs is down 4,000 since controls were lifted – more jobs for my Constituents – unemployment [in the constituency] down 30% over the last year and 62 found work last month – congratulations”
The constituency by constituency figures published each month do not measure ‘unemployment’, they only measure the number of people claiming Job Seekers Allowance.
Mrs Perry reached the 62 figure by subtracting the number of claimants for JSA in the Devizes constituency for April from the number for March. She cannot possibly know how many of those 62 ‘found work’.
The reduction might be accounted for by death, disablement, retirement, moving out of the constituency, being so fed-up with the new sanctions regime that someone stops claiming JSA – and so on.
The total of those unemployed is given by the ‘ILO unemployment’ figure, which also tells us the unemployment rate – currently 6.8 per cent. For January-to-March this figure was 2,210,000 and the total number claiming JSA was 1,142,340. The difference is 1,067,660 unemployed people who are not claiming JSA and a proportion of those must be living in the Devizes constituency.
Those getting work are finding that in post recession Britain there is a very different jobs market.
After months of claiming that the number of zero hours contracts in the UK was in the hundreds of thousands, at the end of April we finally got an official estimate from the Office for National Statistics that there are 1.4 million zero hour contracts in use in the UK.
These contracts mean that a worker can be called into work and paid for as little as a day a week and under some zero hour contracts they cannot take other work when they are not needed.
Part-time work is also on the increase. The figures published last week showed the number of part-time workers in January-March stood at 8.18 million – up 107,000 on the previous three months and up 573,000 than a year earlier.
The other main change in the jobs market is the huge rise in those who are self-employed. In January-March the number was 4.55 million – an increase of 183,000 on the previous three months and 375,000 in the same three months last year. That 183,000 increase sits beside an increase in the number of people working as employees of 99,000 for January-March.
A recent report from the Resolution Foundation found that the weekly earnings of the self-employed have dropped since 2006-07 by 20 per cent. It is estimated that half of those who are self-employed earn £12,000 a year or less – below the full-time minimum wage.
All three changes in the jobs market – zero hours, part-time working and self-employment –mean that the public money spent on in-work benefits is rising. It is in reality a government subsidy to employers using tax payers’ money.
And just how easy is it to find work? MNO put ‘agricultural worker’ and a Marlborough post code into the government’s www.gov.uk/jobsearch website. Four jobs came up:
• One looks like a zero hours contract on a poultry farm near Stockbridge (Hampshire): “primarily a weekend position, however there will be times when you will be required to work extra hours throughout the week to cover sickness and holidays.” The position is described as ‘part-time – less than 30 hours’ and pays £7.93/hour.
• Another was near Salisbury for “Checking and packing our free range eggs”. Pay about £7.00/hour – “Part-time less than 30 hours – shifts over 7 days.” “Please only apply if you have transport to get to and from the job.”
• The third was for a “Waste recycling picker – segregating skip waste into recyclable products.” One assumes the word ‘picker’ – as in fruit picker – has caused a sloppy algorithm to place this very un-agricultural job in the wrong section.
• The other job opening was for a “Cherry-picker driver” for a recruitment firm for the maintenance and construction sector. One assumes the words ‘picker’ (again) and ‘cherry’ led to this job being suggested for those seeking agricultural work.
Of course, there are many other ways of looking for work.