Wednesday 22 January 2014

Unemployment falls again ...

Unemployment has fallen by 167,000 to 2.32million.  In a sense this is good news, but there is another side to the figures.  This post is from the Daily Mail website:

I work at the job center and can honestly tell you people are not back in work! We mark people back in work when we stop their benefits and we have a number of different ways of doing this. Once we stop a persons benefits they are marked down on government papers as "found work" even though they are not at work.

While this may well be true, it applies to the claimant count, and not to the Labour Market Survey which is the statistic we are dealing with here.  While any statistics can be manipulated, allow me to take the government's figures at face value.

If unemployment continues to fall at the present rate, then it will fall to zero in less than four years.  That may seem impressive, but a similar fall in unemployment in 1997 did not lead to full employment.

Britain remains a country where many people - including many working people - are dependent on food banks.  Crime remains high, with shoplifting on the increase.  The coalition government really needs to raise its game if it is to stand any chance of keeping Ed Miliband out of Downing Street.


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