it’s hard to keep up with the pace of the British jobs miracle. Each month, the figures confound the predictions of even the most optimistic economists. In last year’s Budget, for example, George Osborne set out an ambitious target of getting 900,000 more people into work by 2018. This figure will now be reached next month.
All this is nothing short of phenomenal: more jobs are being created in Britain than in the rest of Europe put together. And it is also troubling the Bank of England, whose own forecasts have been proved as wrong as everyone else’s. Mark Carney, its governor, said last summer that he would not think about raising interest rates until unemployment fell below 7 per cent – which he expected to take three years. It took six months.
There has clearly been a game-changer, something that none of the economists had incorporated in their models. And senior figures inside the Bank are beginning to conclude (and openly hint) that this is Iain Duncan Smith’s welfare reforms.
What confounded the eggheads was that the number of workers is growing four times faster than the number of working-age people: in other words, Britons have become far more likely than pretty much anyone else to look for –and find – work. Why? It’s hardly the dazzling salaries on offer, since wages are still being outpaced by inflation. Nor is it immigration: that’s still continuing, but the dole queues are shrinking faster. Fewer people now claim the three main out-of-work benefits than at any time during the Labour years.
Now the rest of the article includes the admission that salaries remain stubbornly low. As soon as I saw the employment figures I was muttering under my breath about fulltime vs part time vs zero hour. Should I be? Is it fair to discredit this just because i'm ideologically opposed to the welfare reforms and want to find 'the catch'?
What I put to the board is: "Is it better to have more people in crap jobs or more people on benefits"?
"Aid, trade, green technology and peace." - Hans Rosling.
"Welcome to SDN, where we can't see the forest because walking into trees repeatedly feels good, bro." - Mr Coffee
From my own experience a minimum-wage job is about three times more money than jobseeker's allowance, so I would much rather have more people actually working than being on the unemployment list.
Baltar: "I don't want to miss a moment of the last Battlestar's destruction!"
Centurion: "Sir, I really think you should look at the other Battlestar."
Baltar: "What are you babbling about other...it's impossible!"
Centurion: "No. It is a Battlestar."
Corrax Entry 7:17: So you walk eternally through the shadow realms, standing against evil where all others falter. May your thirst for retribution never quench, may the blood on your sword never dry, and may we never need you again.
It's fudging the figures, that's why there are less people on benefits.
Anyone getting sanctioned? not included in the figures
Anyone self employed and on tax credits since they don't make enough? not included
Part Time/Zero Hour contracts? oh they're included, even though they frequently don't equal anywhere near enough for people to live on and require tax credits to top up their wages
IDS welfare reforms are so bad his department are literally refusing to release the figures on how much it's all costing, redefining how poverty is defined to hide the impact of his reforms, ignoring the explosion in food banks since the reforms etc.
“The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that the English language is as pure as a crib-house whore. It not only borrows words from other languages; it has on occasion chased other languages down dark alley-ways, clubbed them unconscious and rifled their pockets for new vocabulary. “
- James Nicoll
Eternal_Freedom wrote:From my own experience a minimum-wage job is about three times more money than jobseeker's allowance, so I would much rather have more people actually working than being on the unemployment list.
Surely that depends on the hourly rate and the weekly hours? What with recent increases in zero hours contracts, self-employment and part-time work that's increasingly likely to be not necessarily true. Not to mention that stagnation of wages and rising living costs will further blunt the difference.
What this so-called "jobs miracle" actually shows is that the balance of power has slid further towards being in favour of employers, who are more able to offer crappy terms, hours and pay.
Does it follow that I reject all authority? Perish the thought. In the matter of boots, I defer to the authority of the boot-maker - Mikhail Bakunin Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the laborer, unless under compulsion from society - Karl Marx Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we've been ignorant of their value - R. Buckminster Fuller The important thing is not to be human but to be humane - Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
Nova Mundi, my laughable attempt at an original worldbuilding/gameplay project
Yeah, it does depend on hours and so on, hence why I said "in my experience." However, at present the rate of jobseeker's allowance is about £55 a week, so assuming you're on a minimum-wage job you only need to work 9 hours per week to be better off. And every single job I saw advertised at the Jobcentre this morning was for at least 20 hours.
Baltar: "I don't want to miss a moment of the last Battlestar's destruction!"
Centurion: "Sir, I really think you should look at the other Battlestar."
Baltar: "What are you babbling about other...it's impossible!"
Centurion: "No. It is a Battlestar."
Corrax Entry 7:17: So you walk eternally through the shadow realms, standing against evil where all others falter. May your thirst for retribution never quench, may the blood on your sword never dry, and may we never need you again.
Seriously? I was getting £71 a week on jobseekers before I went self employed. Mind you I had been employed and paying taxes for twenty years beforehand so I got the maximum amount. Until the bus broke down one sunny Monday and seeing as I was late a second time in (arbitrary time period) so they hit me with a sanction, even though I phoned in and let them know why I was going to be late both times.
So I stare wistfully at the Lightning for a couple of minutes. Two missiles, sharply raked razor-thin wings, a huge, pregnant belly full of fuel, and the two screamingly powerful engines that once rammed it from a cold start to a thousand miles per hour in under a minute. Life would be so much easier if our adverseries could be dealt with by supersonic death on wings - but alas, Human resources aren't so easily defeated.
There's two types, income-based and contribution based. I'm only 22 so contribution-based is a totaly mystery to me. I get £88 a week as I'm disabled and I'm struggling on that (roll on September when my job starts) so £55 sounds painful.
Baltar: "I don't want to miss a moment of the last Battlestar's destruction!"
Centurion: "Sir, I really think you should look at the other Battlestar."
Baltar: "What are you babbling about other...it's impossible!"
Centurion: "No. It is a Battlestar."
Corrax Entry 7:17: So you walk eternally through the shadow realms, standing against evil where all others falter. May your thirst for retribution never quench, may the blood on your sword never dry, and may we never need you again.
Is that in addition to some sort of housing allowance or are you expected to live entirely off of something like $125(or whatever the exchange rate is) a week?
Housing Benefit is separate but has it's own hurdles. You only get X% towards your housing based on circumstances and the system is in mid-change to make it even worse.
When I was on Jobseekers Allowance before I left the UK I was getting £60 odds a week. However I was also getting my rent mostly paid. My rent was £375 per month for a 2 bedroom house in inner east Belfast, the dole paid £350 a month of that as my National Insurance contributions were solid. That meant I had to live on £55 a week which as a single man at the time was very easy to do.
you're not really going to find cheaper rent in the UK than in east inner belfast though. I'm in cardiff, hardly a huge metropole and it's £550 for a one bedroom (big) flat
"Aid, trade, green technology and peace." - Hans Rosling.
"Welcome to SDN, where we can't see the forest because walking into trees repeatedly feels good, bro." - Mr Coffee
I'm up in Treforest, near Pontypridd, paying £375 a month for a medium-size one-bedroom flat.
Baltar: "I don't want to miss a moment of the last Battlestar's destruction!"
Centurion: "Sir, I really think you should look at the other Battlestar."
Baltar: "What are you babbling about other...it's impossible!"
Centurion: "No. It is a Battlestar."
Corrax Entry 7:17: So you walk eternally through the shadow realms, standing against evil where all others falter. May your thirst for retribution never quench, may the blood on your sword never dry, and may we never need you again.
72 a week for a 3 story single bed house (imagine a vertical flat) up here in Blaenau Ffestiniog. Not too bad now I'm a trainee accountant, and paid for by the dole before that. When I lived in Bangor (The City in North West Wales) it was 65 a week for a room in a house up to over 100 for a room, but it was mostly focused on student letting.
Lord Pounder wrote:When I was on Jobseekers Allowance before I left the UK I was getting £60 odds a week. However I was also getting my rent mostly paid. My rent was £375 per month for a 2 bedroom house in inner east Belfast, the dole paid £350 a month of that as my National Insurance contributions were solid. That meant I had to live on £55 a week which as a single man at the time was very easy to do.
£375 rent will get you £290 housing benefit with a spare bedroom.
Weekly amount of JSA for Income and Contribution is becoming the same which is £57.35 or £72.40 if you are under or over 25 respectively.
Essentially, you are using one week of your JSA to make up the difference from your Housing Benefit every month under the current system.
