Latest government figures just out show redundancies for the last quarter are up to 158,000 see Office for National Statistics. This is the first increase in redundancies since the three months to April and apparently took city economists, who had been expecting a 15,000 drop, by surprise.
The graph on the near right shows the rise in unemployment and the one on the far right shows the fall in employment: In other words, the different sides of the same coin.
The extra numbers out of work are fuelled by public sector cuts and take the total of unemployed to over 2.5 million (though Scotland bucked the overall UK trend, with unemployment falling there by 5,000). There’s an article in The Guardian that tells more, so you can nip over there if you’re interested in more details.
One of the things I picked up on and take issue with is David Cameron’s comment that: “We must do everything we can to help people into a job”
Hang on:
The Public Sector is cutting back 330,000 jobs over four years and analysts believe that weak job creation in the private sector will only lead to more unemployment.
“In many cases, businesses are still too cautious about future prospects to aggressively expand headcount, especially ahead of a year in which the VAT rise and the effect of soaring commodity prices will squeeze households” is the view of Charles Davis, managing economist at the Centre for Economics and Business Research.
So where are these jobs going to magically come from, David?
It’s probably pretty important to say here that I’m not being all gloom, doom and despondency. It’s more that, in an economy like this people are probably going to think a darned sight more creatively than they have in quite some time.
And the first thing I’d like to say to government, Response to Redundancy contractors and the recruitment industry in general is this:
Getting somebody into a job that only needs to last for 13 weeks to count as a success, look good on the figures and earn the Response to Redundancy contractors, Recruitment Agencies and Recruitment Consultancies their fees can’t be the real aim. That will just play havoc with the big picture of what’s really going on and, worse, play havoc with people’s lives.
The aim should surely be to help individuals find ways to legitimately earn a decent, sustainable living and not penalise them overall financially when they take themselves off the dole.
And maybe that means approaching the whole ‘job’ seeking activity with a much more open mind.
Maybe take a radical thought?
How “safe” is it for an individual to put his or her weekly, monthly and annual earning potential into the hands of one employer? An individual who can turn round with little warning and say: “I’m sorry, your services aren’t needed any more.”
Maybe some people would prefer not to have all their eggs in one basket next time around. That doesn’t necessarily mean ‘setting up a business’ in the old sense of the word. What do you think? What alternative options could you come up with that you’d want to look into?
What have others had a go at that appeal to you?