Here is the BBC News website’s
summary of the unemployment figures
published yesterday, 17 May 2017.
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The UK unemployment rate has fallen to 4·6%, its lowest in 42 years,
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The jobless rate has not been lower since the June to August period of 1975.
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The employment rate, the proportion of 16 to 64 year olds in work, was 74·8%, the highest since records began in 1971.
You can take that as the official version of the figures, published by the
Office of National Statistics (ONS), which is the equivalent in today’s money
of the Ministry of Truth. Disputing their opinions, particularly it seems in
the Houses of Parliament, sets off a hurricane of rage from those who
have put their faith in them.
There are many expressions of stunned disbelief in the English language, but like the great George Orwell, writing in his newspaper column
‘As I Please’, on 19 January 1945,
I sense that, reading these incredible statements, you find the phrase
‘and then you wake up’
coming immediately to hand.
It is common experience that unemployment is completely out of control.
Unemployment has in reality reached a level so high that no politician
of any political stamp
asks to be put in charge of it.
Worse, so far, no politician in the last few years has even suggested that
anything can,
or ought to be, done about it.
On the contrary, several recently adopted government policies,
for example that on the State pension,
require old people to remain
employed until an age well into three figures*,
and assume, despite train-loads of evidence to the contrary,
that there will be well paid work for all who want it.
Not for the first time I sense that the government has been deceived by its own
propaganda.
This time, though, the Opposition is guilty of pretending to accept ONS statistics
on unemployment, for fear of finding itself responsible for a desperately
serious problem
for which it has neither diagnosis nor remedy.
It is exceedingly difficult to find a job, as my own experience and that of, probably, millions of others has shown. Unemployment is certainly well into the
millions. How many millions exactly, nobody knows.
Further evidence may be found by searching on line for
‘How they fiddle the unemployment figures,’
or any synonymous phrase. You will see dozens of hits, each representing a
different list of old Spanish customs whereby the ONS reduces the unemployment
figures
without actually employing anybody.
The only plausible alternative explanation of the disparity between
the ONS figures and reality is that the ONS,
far from counting the unemployed people and falsifying the results,
simply makes up the figures
as it goes along.
I doubt whether anyone in government, or anywhere else for that matter, knows
who qualifies as unemployed and who doesn’t,
let alone the vital information:
who is unemployed, where they live, what skills they have,
what they might be trained to do, or anything else about them.
What that means, I think, is that nobody in government actually
cares
about those people, including me, who face the daily misery of
having no work to do and precious little money.
That is especially poignant in the light of evidence such as a study called
Modelling suicide and unemployment (The Guardian, 11/02/15)
that, among men at least,
unemployment is a common precursor of suicide.
To the people who are undergoing it, unemployment is sometimes a burden
which they take the most desperate of measures to throw off.
In the absence of any serious proposals from any political party
to deal with unemployment,
here are my modest proposals to ameliorate it.
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Unemployment remains sky high, so stop lying about it. I haven’t spoken
to a single person who believes the ONS figures.
Count unemployed people in exactly the same way as they were counted
in the days when an interviewer asked the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson,
whether he would resign if unemployment were to reach a quarter of
a million.
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Stop trying to force unemployed people to find work.
Most unemployed people would probably accept a decent job if they
were offered one. Any who prefer to remain on benefits,
which means living on a budget so small that many unemployed people cannot afford
electricity and food, are at least leaving a job empty
so that someone who wants it can have it.
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Raise the benefits that unemployed people receive.
By a stroke of irony, paying unemployed people more money would reduce
unemployment.
Increasing the amount of money that people actually spend is a pre-requisite for
an increase in the amount of goods sold, which is in turn probably a
better way of reducing unemployment than not counting people with hats.
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Finally, stop buying cheap goods from China.
It's one thing to buy some cheap rubbish from China, or anywhere else,
when you want some cheap rubbish.
If you want a dress that costs ten times what the shop gave for it,
doesn't fit and then falls to bits,
China is probably the right supplier for you.
It’s another thing altogether to buy things from a country
which appears to have been subsidising the manufacture of various goods
and then dumping them in British shops at less than what it costs
the Chinese to produce.
9 March 2019.
I have now learned the reason for the number of people employed being the highest since the Great Fire of London,
or whatever it’s supposed to be.
It is not a sign of increasing wealth.
It is a sign of increasing poverty.
A large number of people above the State pensionable age, just increased to 65 years for both sexes, cannot afford to retire.
They are continuing to work because they have no choice.
If you thought that children leaving school, or qualified professionals leaving university, or old men made redundant over the age of 50, were finding well paid work easily
instead of spending years making one hopeless job application after another,
forget it.
In future you will work for poverty wages until you drop dead.
The Tories, knowing this, have done nothing to stop it happening, and never will.
3 May 2019
I have recently learned how it comes about that the number of people in work is high — usually cited as ‘the highest in the entire history of the universe’ or some similar accolade.
What has really happened is that many women have had their pensionable age increased from the former sixty years to sixty-six years, or even sixty-seven.
Because of that, many women are unable to leave work as planned, and have to stay on until their pension arrives.
Hence, there are a lot of people in work, but there are still no jobs.
