No Matter How You Spin The Figures There’s Still No Fucking Jobs

No matter how much DWP Ministers try to spin the figures there is still a desperate shortage of jobs.

It is simply not known how much of this month’s fall in unemployment is down to zero hours contracts, or how many of the 4.36 million people now working self-employed are dependent on Working Tax Credits and not making any real money.

Although this month shows a welcome drop in the use of workfare, this also distorts the true picture of the labour market. Unpaid workers on Jobcentre schemes are conveniently disappeared from the official tally of the unemployed. Benefit sanctions, which have risen sharply, can also lead people to abandon benefit claims and drop out of the figures – often to disappear into the black market or become dependent on the charity of friends, families and foodbanks. No-one is counting how many people are now living like this.

Whatever the true rate of unemployment one thing is certain. There are currently 2.32 million officially unemployed people and just 569,000 vacancies. Even if all those vacancies are filled by someone unemployed tomorrow, there will still be approaching two million unemployed people.

But this still doesn’t tell the whole story. Even in a time of full employment (stop laughing) there would still be a significant number of vacancies, as people changed jobs, retired, went on maternity leave etc. Ignoring the self-employed, there are around 25 million people in employment. If as few as one in fifty people is currently working out a notice period then that would create half a million vacancies. In other words, there is no room in the system for unemployed people, who must desperately compete with people already in work for a tiny number of vacancies.

For those who are highly skilled, or recently unemployed that might not be so bad. But people who are long term unemployed, have health conditions which limit the work they can do, children to work around or criminal records can face a gloomy future.

And this is why the current attacks on people claiming out of work benefits are beneath contempt. It is a bullshit that people are unemployed because they are lazy. There are not enough jobs to go round – by about 2 million – and this doesn’t include people on sickness and disability benefits or lone parents with young children. Add them and the UK’s job shortage is closer to five million.

No amount of bullying or harassing claimants will change this fact. No amount of workfare, of any form, will create a single job, and common sense suggests it will do the opposite. All benefit sanctions do is demolish people and make them less likely to find work than ever.

It is hard to imagine a more inhuman system than one in which there will never be enough jobs to go around, yet those without them are shamed and attacked, over and over again. It is beyond horrific, like making ten people fight for seven meals and then blaming the people going hungry for the fact that there wasn’t enough food. It is as absurd as it is cruel and it’s time to grow the fuck up and accept the reality of the jobs market in the UK.  Only then can an honest debate take place about what a humane welfare state would look like.

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