Latest from Coffee House

Ministers are generally cautious in welcoming falls in unemployment in case they represent a blip for just one quarter. But Iain Duncan Smith was pretty chipper this morning when the Office for National Statistics announced a fall in the jobless stats for the fifth quarter running and the strongest employment rise since the middle of 2010. In the three months to June 2012, 29 million people were in work, up by 201,000 on the previous quarter. The employment rate rose by 0.4 per cent to 71 per cent, and there are 4,000 fewer unemployed young people.  The number of unemployed people fell by 46,000 to 2.56 million. As the graph

Today’s headline figures on unemployment are good news: a 65,000 fall in the number of unemployed people to 2.58 million in the three months to May and a 0.2 per cent fall in the unemployment rate to 8.1 per cent of the economically active population. The focus is now growing on the Work Programme to deliver on its promises. Liam Byrne’s response to the figures was that they were ‘fresh evidence that the beleaguered Work Programme isn’t working’. But as Fraser blogged last week, it’s rather too early to tell either way, actually. The CBI says that a 6,100 rise in the number of people claiming Jobseekers Allowance, and 441,000 people who have

The cutting of 17 army units by 2020 was never going to be popular. It is over-dramatic to suggest we now have a self-defence force rather than an army, but the loss of 20,000 regular soldiers will clearly have an effect on the UK’s ability to wage war. And yet the cutting is the easy part. The test for the government (or the next) is how they tackle the consequences. One of these will be large-scale redundancies among ex-soldiers and support staff. Has anyone thought about this? We already know that unemployment and mental health problems are an issue among veterans and that many end up in prison. This is

Hardly a day goes by without more bad news on youth unemployment. The latest figures on NEETs (a horrible de-humanising term for school leavers who are not in education, employment or training) show that the numbers rose between 2010 and 2011 to over eight per cent. The release of these statistics coincided with new polling which showed a near-complete collapse of support for the government among young people. Does this government hate young people? Probably not. Does it belatedly realise it has a massive problem with youth unemployment? Yes it does. The Youth Contract was introduced by Nick Clegg because he and those around him recognised that the Work Programme

At the time of the student protests, I laid out in the Observer the demographic facts that push unscrupulous politicians into picking on the young. Their political vulnerability is the best explanation for the regularity with which the coalition assaults their interests, I said. In democracies, politicians worry about those who vote and a majority of the young do not. Ipsos MORI estimated that only 44% of 18 to 24-year-olds and only 55% of 25 to 30-year-olds voted in the 2010 election. By contrast, 73% of 55 to 64-year-olds and 76% of those aged 65 or over turned out: In the mid-20th century, the customary political apathy of youth did

I know it’s wrong to take John Prescott seriously, but his attack on the government’s work experience programme epitomises a sneering attitude that is quite widespread. It was most egregiously displayed by the BBC Today Programme in its flagship 8.10am report about those who volunteered to steward the Jubilee celebrations — except the BBC report never once used the word ‘volunteer’. There’s going to be a lot more of these work experience offers, thank God, and we can expect the government’s critics to ask if the labour market is ‘receding into the 19th Century’ with ‘Dickensian’ tactics (to use the BBC’s disgraceful language). Rather, this is a 21st century solution

Today’s jobs figures show a 105,000 rise in employment and a 45,000 fall in unemployment, from the final quarter of 2011 to the first quarter of 2012. Welcome news, although both figures are within the margin of error, meaning we can’t say with confidence that employment is indeed higher or that unemployment is lower. But even taking the figures at face value, there’s another cause for concern: the rise in employment is coming in part-time, rather than full-time, jobs. First, let’s take a look at that total employment figure, which has risen 105,000 since the last quarter and 219,000 since the general election: Second, the number of full-time workers: As

Here are some numbers for you: the adult rate of the national minimum wage will be raised, this October, by 11p to £6.19 an hour, but the separate rates for 16-17 and 18-20 year-olds will be frozen, at £3.68 and £4.98 respectively. I mention this not just because these figures were announced today, but also because it’s the first cash freeze in any of the rates that we’ve seen since 2005 (and even that was when the 16-17 year-old rate was kept at the same level after its very first year of existence): The question is, what now? The government is defending the freeze by saying that, ‘Raising the youth

So, new jobs figures out today. Which do you want first: the bad news, or the kind-of-alright news? The bad news is that employment’s showing no signs of growth: the total number in work has been stuck at 29.1 million since it fell there in the summer. It’s a touch better than the trough of 28.8 million we hit at the end of 2009, but still half a million below where we were when the recession hit. And we’re showing no signs of getting there any time soon: And the not-so-bad news? Unemployment’s slightly down on last month, which was slightly down on the month before. It’s not a big

Today’s ONS release will make pretty grim reading for students and recent graduates. It shows that the unemployment rate among recent graduates — those who graduated in the last six years — stands at 9.1 per cent, higher than the overall unemployment rate of 8.4 per cent. It’s even worse for those who graduated in the last two years — the unemployment rate among them is 18.9 per cent, up from 10 per cent before the recession. But there’s an even more worrying trend among those recent graduates who do find employment. In 2001, three-quarters of them were in ‘higher skill’ jobs — those requiring more than GCSEs. Now, less

Youth unemployment is approaching crisis levels in Britain. For almost two decades, Britain’s more flexible labour market had favourable effects on youth employment. But the re-regulation of the British economy has narrowed the difference between our jobs market, and that of the continent. Meanwhile the British poverty trap has been strengthened by a dysfunctional welfare state: British workers can in some circumstances keep as little as 5p in every extra pound they earn if they find work. Who would break their back for less than 50p an hour? We’re paying people not to bother, so little wonder that most of the employment rise — in the last government, and under

On the Today Programme this morning, Employment Minister Chris Grayling defended the government’s Work Experience programme in light of the recent controversies around it. Here’s a full transcript of the interview: Evan Davis: Well how can work experience get such a bad name? A string of high profile companies have pulled out of one government scheme providing work experience for young people. The latest, retailer Poundland, has announced it is suspending its participation in the scheme although it’s not quite clear which scheme it is, because there are several government schemes for getting people, long-term unemployed or young, into work. Let’s see if we can clarify what is going on

The employment level has risen since the election, according to today’s figures — albeit only slightly, from 29.0m to 29.1m. But unemployment’s up too: from 2.46m to 2.67m. So how come we’ve seen both more jobs and lengthening dole queues? Well, that’s because the ‘economically active’ population (people who are in work or ‘have been actively seeking work and are available to start work if a job is offered’) has grown faster than employment has. There are now 31.8m people in the UK who fit that description, an increase of 320,000 since the coalition came to power. But with only a 110,000 rise in employment, that means the number of

No two ways about it: today’s employment figures are difficult for the coalition. The unemployment figure’s up for the seventh month in a row, and now stands at 2.68 million — the highest since 1994. And the unemployment rate — up to 8.4 per cent — is at its highest since 1995. It doesn’t look like getting better anytime soon, either: unemployment’s predicted to carry on rising at least until the end of the year, possibly matching the three million peak of the early ‘90s. In its defence, the government claims that employment is rising too. Today’s figure of 29.1 million in employment is about 150,000 higher than it was

Reading the papers today, you could be forgiven for thinking that MigrationWatch’s new report was a smoking gun against immigration. Here we have a study that links immigration to unemployment, in the face of nearly all previous research that has found no such link. However, looking at the MigrationWatch piece itself, it quickly becomes clear how implausible these claims are. The MigrationWatch report centres on a comparison of rising youth unemployment and rising immigration from the ‘A8’ countries – the Eastern European states that joined the EU in 2004. The correlation between the two is remarkably weak. During the initial rise in immigration between 2004 and the end of 2008,

There was a time when Nick Clegg was the most agile and persistent defender of the coalition’s deficit reduction programme. But now — although he’s still got it in him — he is more often wheeled out to announce some spending wheeze or other. A couple of weeks ago, it was the next instalment of the government’s regional growth fund. Today, it’s a £1 billion scheme, spread out over three years, to encourage companies to take on young people. This latest scheme is one of those that looks very neat on paper. Put aside questions about how it will be funded, and what we have is a plan whereby £2,275

Despite – or perhaps because of – the recession, pensioner employment has increased dramtically over the past few years. In his Telegraph column today, Fraser remarks on this important but largely ignored trend in Britain’s workforce. ‘A million jobs have been lost since the Great Recession began’, he says, ‘but the number of pension-aged people in work has increased by 200,000.’ Here’s that phenomenom in graph form: Why has this happened? Fraser puts his finger on one important factor: ‘Crucially, they pay less tax. A pensioner manning the tills in Tesco will take home 12 per cent more than a working-age colleague on the same salary.’ You see, employees over 65 don’t

Today’s unemployment figures do not make for cheery reading. Youth unemployment is up to over a million and unemployment overall has reached 2.62 million, meaning that the unemployment rate is the highest it has been for 15 years. Laura Kuenssberg tweets one particularly striking statistic: ‘Number of UK Nationals in work fell 280k compared to this time last year, number of non-UK Nationals in work increased 147k over same time’ This suggests that it’s a touch too simple just to say that there are no jobs out there. It also means that we really should think about why non-UK nationals are proving so much more adept at finding work than

Today’s youth unemployment figures are simply appalling. It’s now 21 per cent amongst the under-25s, above the peak of 18 per cent seen under the 1990s recession. For the first time since then, Britain’s youth joblessness is worse than the European average. This is a tragedy, and not one we should accept as being a grimly inevitable aspect of the recession. Ed Miliband said in PMQs that a million young people are on the dole: a statistic everyone should get angry about. And we can think of what has gone wrong. The above graph shows how Britain has nothing left to boast about in unemployment. Blair used to love heading