More than a fifth of UK adults not looking for work

[hifinutt]

Well interesting piece from BBC , I am not at all surprised . just trying to get childcare is a nightmare . the kids get ill and are sent home , then there is a measles outbreak so they have to shut the whole place and so on and so on. Mums cant keep a job down unless childcare is there and support

More than a fifth of working-age adults in the UK are deemed not to be actively looking for work, figures suggest.
The UK's economic inactivity rate was 21.8% between November and January, marginally higher than a year earlier.
It means 9.2 million people aged between 16 and 64 in the UK are not in work nor looking for a job. The total figure is more than 700,000 higher than before the coronavirus pandemic.
Concerns have been raised over worker shortages affecting the UK economy.
The health of the UK economy is in the spotlight with the general election set to be called in the coming months and both major political parties pledging to boost growth.
The UK fell into recession at the end of last year when the economy shrank for two consecutive three-month periods, but latest official statistics showed the level of unemployment remained steady. The figure also showed that wage rises slowed again, although pay is still outpacing inflation.

To get inactivity down government needs to look at childcare, transport and address NHS waiting lists," he said. "The Budget didn't add up to the industrial and workforce strategy we really need despite the chancellor's obvious interest in workforce matters."

More than a fifth of UK adults not looking for work

The UK's economic inactivity rate was 21.8% from November to January, official figures show.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[gavreid]

I'm not for a start!

 

[Sue Pertwee-Tyr]

It's another example of how cutting public spending (social care, inc. childcare, etc) can bite you on the bum, economically speaking.

 

[Enfield boy]

Why would 20% be a surprise? Once upon a time, when workers received reasonable pay it was more like 50%. After marriage my Mum only worked about half the time she could have done and we weren't well off by any means.

 

[ks.234]

It used to be that under the classical economic model, unemployment was used as the economic stabiliser. What that report shows is that not much has changed except under employment and low wages has taken the place of unemployment as the weapon of choice.

Apart from a spike in 2021, real wages have been on a downward trend since the last global crash.

The classical economic model has failed.

The Keynesian model based on investing in genuine full employment by and large worked to recover from the first global financial crisis and a World War.

We are not learning the lessons of history.

 

[wulbert]

It's another example of how cutting public spending (social care, inc. childcare, etc) can bite you on the bum, economically speaking.

Yeah, I heard an economics professor talking about how UK's poor elderly care results in women over 50yrs old withdrawing en masse from the workplace to become a carer for parents. Not all public spending is money wasted, it would seem. It might even be an investment.

 

[wulbert]

....Concerns have been raised over worker shortages affecting the UK economy...

And yet, when my son applies for any half-decent job, he is told there were hundreds of applicants. Something doesn't add up.

 

[Brian Ellis]

It’s not a lack of jobs as my son has been really struggling to secure a job. I believe it’s a growing unskilled labour force, the lack of basic communication skills as well as a growing section of society who have no desire or intention of working.

 

[Bob McC]

Your evidence for any of that is…?

you discount Wulbert’s point plus the known fact that post Covid large swathes of the 55+ workforce who could take early retirement did so.

 

[Enfield boy]

It’s not a lack of jobs as my son has been really struggling to secure a job. I believe it’s a growing unskilled labour force, the lack of basic communication skills as well as a growing section of society who have no desire or intention of working.

If it's not a lack of jobs I don't understand why your son is struggling unless you're saying he's too skilled for the jobs available.

 

[SteveG]

I wonder how much of that is folks that have retired early? Technically I've got 11 years left until my retirement age but am likely to retire (again) next year so would assume that I'd then be included in those stats.

 

[hifinutt]

....Concerns have been raised over worker shortages affecting the UK economy...

And yet, when my son applies for any half-decent job, he is told there were hundreds of applicants. Something doesn't add up.

Yes got a family member once very successful in jobs now unemployed for over a year due to so many hundreds going for every job

 

[gavreid]

Yes got a family member once very successful in jobs now unemployed for over a year due to so many hundreds going for every job

They'll be a lot of people looking to move jobs for better pay and working conditions.

 

[hifinutt]

He says wages are getting less and less for jobs he applies to .very very dispiriting .this guy 18 months ago was getting holidays abroad as a perk for doing so well but now just hitting so many barriers

One job recently he got the company selling teeth alignment went bust after he was there for 5 days .one company he spent half the night preparing for withdraw the interview about 5 mins before he was due to do it .this guy could sell fridges to Alaska or anything you like but just not getting anywhere now .its tough out there as i am sure many will know

 

[wulbert]

There's plenty of what I would call "non-jobs", e.g. being a delivery driver for an Amazon subsidiary. My son went for an interview for one of those and was offered the job on the spot, which made him a bit suspicious.
When he asked a friend, who'd had a similar job, about his experience he said that after his first month, he actually owed the company money! There were all sorts of bull-shit, up-front set-up "fees", you were classed as a self-employed agent, "fines" for being late or slow delivery (which were often made up) and a "fuel allowance" that you paid up front yourself, it was then loaded onto a fuel card and you claimed a reimbursement at the end of the month, but you'd actually used more fuel than was on the card, which had to be paid for from your own pocket because you'd clearly been driving "inefficiently" according to the company. It all sounded very sketchy. He declined the job offer.

 

[Tony L]

More than a fifth of working-age adults in the UK are deemed not to be actively looking for work, figures suggest.
The UK's economic inactivity rate was 21.8% between November and January, marginally higher than a year earlier.
It means 9.2 million people aged between 16 and 64 in the UK are not in work nor looking for a job. The total figure is more than 700,000 higher than before the coronavirus pandemic.

It is a bizarre statistic that doesn’t appear to be cross-referenced at all. It doesn’t make sense to me. For a start I thought education (further, apprenticeship etc) through to 18 was compulsory now, so why does the figure start at 16? Secondly the UK unemployment rate appears to be at 3.9% according to Google, so there is clearly a huge discrepancy between 21.8% and that.

I realise there is always a load of chicanery between government stats and reality. I lived through Thatcher’s mass unemployment and the government figures were massaged almost monthly to reduce the count, yet the reality didn’t change, the huge queues outside the dole office and job centres remained, but even so this one makes no sense.

What are they counting here? Is this maybe just another far-right culture war to demonise the disabled?

 

[Enfield boy]

Counting on votes for Reform etc saying "it's scrounger's wot's ruining it."

 

[gez]

Well interesting piece from BBC , I am not at all surprised . just trying to get childcare is a nightmare . the kids get ill and are sent home , then there is a measles outbreak so they have to shut the whole place and so on and so on. Mums cant keep a job down unless childcare is there and support

More than a fifth of working-age adults in the UK are deemed not to be actively looking for work, figures suggest.
The UK's economic inactivity rate was 21.8% between November and January, marginally higher than a year earlier.
It means 9.2 million people aged between 16 and 64 in the UK are not in work nor looking for a job. The total figure is more than 700,000 higher than before the coronavirus pandemic.
Concerns have been raised over worker shortages affecting the UK economy.
The health of the UK economy is in the spotlight with the general election set to be called in the coming months and both major political parties pledging to boost growth.
The UK fell into recession at the end of last year when the economy shrank for two consecutive three-month periods, but latest official statistics showed the level of unemployment remained steady. The figure also showed that wage rises slowed again, although pay is still outpacing inflation.

To get inactivity down government needs to look at childcare, transport and address NHS waiting lists," he said. "The Budget didn't add up to the industrial and workforce strategy we really need despite the chancellor's obvious interest in workforce matters."

More than a fifth of UK adults not looking for work

The UK's economic inactivity rate was 21.8% from November to January, official figures show.

www.bbc.co.uk

Could have fooled me. In over 6 months of searching and applying for jobs that I'm eminently capable of doing, and that my CV proves (to anyone that knows what they're actually talking about at least), I've had just one give me an interview. Getting close to the point where I'm thinking of just giving up, putting my flat up for rent and emigrating and living on a farm in the countryside somewhere.

That said, the number of roles that I've seen re-advertised multiple times just leads me to believe that the people doing the recruiting have no bloody idea what they're doing. If you get 200 applicants for a job there is simply no way that one of them isn't going to be good enough, so either the people sifting the applications haven't the first clue what they're doing, or they simply not even looking at all the applications, or they've got ridiculously high expectations that'll never be fulfilled by any real human being.

 

[raysablade]

Of course many non working people with a decent income are doing important work for free. I'm giving my time to the proto-fascist conspiracy masquerading as the Labour Party.

PS Talk of volunteering and politics reminds me of my favourite burst blue balloon of all time.

 

[Bob McC]

The governor of the BoE says there is no reliable unemployment data and he reckons we are at near full employment!

Britain appears to be near full employment, Bank governor says

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