Jobs

Thursday

Rory Sutherland

Could a degree make you less employable?

A few years ago my employer, the advertising agency Ogilvy, introduced a recruitment scheme called ‘The Pipe’. It was a ‘non-graduate’ recruitment scheme, the name a pun on the smoking implement of choice of the company’s founder, David Ogilvy. Ogilvy himself was kicked out of Oxford in 1931, so this seemed doubly appropriate. The idea was conceived and promoted by two people in our creative department alarmed by the risk of monotone uniformity which results from formalised, risk-averse recruitment procedures. Our aim, in short, was to introduce a kind of stereophonic sound to hiring. Just to be clear, we did not exclude university graduates from applying: it was simply that

Thursday

The Spectator

Labour isn’t working

Labour: the clue should be in the name. In March, Keir Starmer branded Labour the ‘party of work’. If ‘you want to work’, he declared, ‘the government should support you, not stop you’. Even as his premiership staggers from crisis to crisis, that mission remains. If Labour doesn’t stand for ‘working people’ – however nebulously defined – it stands for nothing. As such, this week’s unemployment figures are more than just embarrassing for Starmer; they are a betrayal of his party’s founding purpose. Unemployment has risen to 5 per cent – its highest rate since February 2021, in the middle of the third lockdown. There has been a 180,000 reduction

Thursday

Jonathan Hinder

The left-wing case for controlled immigration

Controlled immigration was once a left-wing cause. It was a basic tenet of trade unionism – not to mention economics – that the number of workers in a labour market dictates the rate of pay. When more and more people compete for the same jobs, employers can cut wages. Those who care about profits rather than wages tend to be in favour of more migration. The capitalist will always dream of importing huge numbers of workers from countries with much lower wages, knowing they can be used to drive down rates of pay and improve profits. The rules of labour supply and demand remain just as true today, but it

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters: Donald Trump’s messiah complex

He’s not the messiah Sir: To Freddy Gray’s meticulous dissection of Trumpian chaos theory (‘Shock tactics’, 12 April) I would add one element: religion. Donald Trump seems to believe the blood he spilt in the failed assassination attempt anointed him his country’s Redeemer: ‘I was saved by God to make America great again.’ Messiahs look to a higher authority than rational argument. Whatever ideas pop into the President’s head he judges right by definition. Tariffs will achieve miracles and wars will cease at his command. There is a strong Gnostic element to this cult, its followers believing Trump has some secret knowledge guiding his apparently wayward actions. To keep him

Thursday

Andrew Lewis

Confessions of a middle-class jobseeker

Having been made redundant from a job in the City, I could have afforded not to sign on at all. But since my P45 showed I had paid well over £40,000 in income tax last year, I didn’t feel desperately guilty about clawing back £90 a week in New Style Jobseeker’s Allowance. I didn’t know how long I would remain unemployed. Plus I wanted to protect my national insurance to keep my entitlement to the state pension. The chaos started almost immediately. I registered online in early February and was told to await a date for my ‘assessment interview’. Instead, a month later, a letter arrived to say I had

Thursday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: how should I thank a friend for dead flowers?

Q. I left fashion school last year and since then I’ve spent most of my time applying for jobs and being rejected. (That’s only if they’re kind enough to send a rejection – most simply ghost me.) I finally have a job (the company does fast fashion) but when I tell my friends, who are all recent graduates, they mostly say: ‘Well I’m happy if you’re happy but I could never work for such an unethical brand.’ How should I reply without sounding unethical myself? – C.P., London SW18 A. Next time you meet with this response you can test the naysayers’ pomposity by replying: ‘Oh that’s a shame. Because

Friday

Ross Clark

Is Britain’s economy being starved of talent?

How is the Prime Minister’s bid to turn Britain into a high-wage economy progressing? It couldn’t be going better just at the moment, to judge by a survey by IHS Markit for KPMG and the Recruitment and Employment Confederation. In September – data was collected between the 13 and 24 September – there was a sharp rise in hiring, while starting salaries were rising at their fastest pace in the 24 years in which the survey has been undertaken. The number of permanent as well as temporary appointments was high, although the latter fell back from a record high in August. The survey suggests that the jobs market turned in

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson

Wanted: an assistant online editor for The Spectator

The Spectator is growing fast. In the last few years, our sales have doubled and are now over 100,000. Most of our readers now turn to our website regularly, some several times a day, for analysis of the day’s events. What started out as a blog has now become a seven-day live digital comment operation and we’re recruiting accordingly. We have come far with a three-person digital team. We’re now looking for a fourth, full-time assistant online editor (to work with us here in 22 Old Queen Street) and also experienced journalists who may be available for shift work, either in the office or remotely. This is a brand new position

Thursday

Kate Andrews

In the post-pandemic economy, the workers are the boss

The world of coronomics continues to surprise us. Last summer forecasters warned of a wave of redundancies after the biggest economic crash in 300 years. Peak unemployment — spurred on by lockdowns — was expected to near 12 per cent, ushering in a new era of chronic financial pain and instability for millions of workers. But the Treasury’s furlough scheme has kept the headline figure down. Unemployment has hovered around 5 per cent, less than half the original prediction. The problem this summer isn’t mass unemployment but worker absenteeism. Job vacancies are now more than a third above pre-pandemic levels. There is no shortage of available work, only a shortage

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

The CV trick that guarantees you an interview

Sometimes the opposite of a good idea is, as Niels Bohr said, another good idea. But the converse is also true. The opposite of a bad idea can easily be an even worse idea. Something like this seems to have happened with the expansion of British higher education. When I left university in 1988, if you wanted a reasonable first job, a degree from a Russell Group university was probably sufficient but not necessary. Now it seems to be necessary but not sufficient. The result is that a large number of perfectly capable but non-academic people are excluded from having a stab at many jobs, where for all we know

Tuesday

Kate Andrews

Is unemployment about to surge?

Despite experiencing the largest economic contraction in over 300 years, UK unemployment figures haven’t budged for months. The furlough scheme seems to have proved successful in shielding many jobs from getting the immediate axe, while those who were made redundant often didn’t appear in the official figures as they were not immediately looking for work. But today’s labour market overview from the ONS shows they have started to tick upward: unemployment is now at 4.1 per cent, 0.3 percentage points up from last year and 0.2 points up from the last quarter.  Breaking down the rate by age, it’s clear the young have suffered the most so far: unemployment for 16

Tuesday

Kate Andrews

Why unemployment figures haven’t budged

Look past the headline statistics and you’ll see economic reality starting to infiltrate the labour market. Today’s employment figures from the Office for National Statistics mark very little movement from the previous quarter, with employment at 76.4 per cent (down 0.2 per cent on the previous quarter) and unemployment at 3.9 per cent (unchanged from the previous quarter, still hovering at a record-low level). Yet today also marks the biggest decrease in UK employment for a decade, since May 2009 in the wake of the financial crash. For many workers, being temporarily away from paid work is likely to become permanent How can this be? The official figures from the

Tuesday

Kate Andrews

Is the jobs cliff-edge fast approaching?

As ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ kickstarts this month – giving customers 50 per cent off their meals (up to £10) at restaurants and pubs that have signed up to the scheme – the centrepiece of the Treasury’s Covid-19 policy package starts to wind down. From this month, employers will be asked to pay a small part of their employees’ wages: 5 per cent now, 10 per cent next month, and 20 per cent in October, before furlough officially comes to an end. A policy that was initially expected to have take-up from 10 per cent of businesses has become the crutch of more than one million businesses across the

Thursday

Harry Mount

Why would anyone want to work from home?

I’ve been having an office romance. Not with anyone in the office — but with the office itself. I’ve been going into the office every day during lockdown and I love everything about it: the bike ride from my Camden flat to work in Fitzrovia; the professional feeling that comes from being in a place dedicated to work; a chance to see more life than the limited activities that go on in your sitting room. I even like office furniture, the soft hum of the photocopier and the stationery box, with its neat cellophane packs of Post-it notes and extensive range of envelopes. But sadly, as an office-lover, I’m in

Friday

Fraser Nelson

The Spectator is growing – and hiring

The Spectator is recruiting, which doesn’t happen often. Our sales have grown in a way that we did not expect during the Covid crisis which is why we are returning our furlough money to the government. Our growth has continued: a quarter of our current subscribers signed up in the past three months. Most have opted for the print magazine but the new subscribers also visit our website on a daily basis; most take our daily emails. They’re after agenda-setting analysis that you simply would not find elsewhere, comment from the best writers in the country, the most informative bulletins and thought-provoking podcasts.  We’re looking for a reporter, in the spirit of our political mischief internship (which Katy

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Sunak’s statement, shop closures and a hoo-ha over Boohoo

Home Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced measures intended to stimulate the economy. Under a £111 million scheme, companies in England would be given £1,000 for each new work experience place they offered. Under a £2 billion scheme, householders would be given two-thirds of the cost of energy-saving work such as insulation, up to £5,000. The government made available £1.57 billion in emergency support for the arts and heritage sites; it was to go to institutions, not freelance performers. Among business failures and job losses, sandwich chain Pret A Manger was to close 30 of its 410 shops and lose 1,000 staff. Up to 5,000 jobs were to

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The young are the most vulnerable to the Covid crash

Coronavirus is deadlier for the old than the young. But for the young, it is economically devastating. A third of working 18- to 24-year-olds have lost work because of the pandemic. Between March and May, the number of those under 24 claiming universal credit doubled to almost half a million, and those who leave school or university this year can expect to earn less a decade from now than they otherwise would have done. During lockdown the young have, to a remarkable extent, accepted their lives being put on hold to protect their elders. Fairness dictates that steps must now be taken to prevent them from bearing the brunt of

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

Finally, we’re unboxing the teleporter

This week’s Wiki Man may read a bit oddly. You see, I haven’t ‘written’ it at all; I’ve dictated it into a kind of dictaphone (an Olympus LS-P4, at £130, needlessly expensive for the purpose, but that’s how I roll) and then uploaded the audio file to an online transcription service called otter.ai. The reason I’m doing this is to find out how long it takes to write a Spectator article when you dictate it and get it transcribed online, compared with writing it on a keyboard like it’s 1940 or something. I’ll let you know the result at the end of this article. But I’m doing this because I

Thursday

Rory Sutherland and Matthew Lesh

Will Covid kill off the office?

The most useless technology is the one you invent but fail to exploit. The Incas invented the wheel, but seem only to have used it on toys. Hero of Alexandria designed the first steam engine in the 1st century ad, but it was seen as a gimmick. The technological opportunity to escape from city-centre offices has been stuck in a similar limbo between invention and implementation. In the 1970s, Nasa engineer Jack Nilles envisaged ‘teleworking’ from local work centres. In 1984, the Times reported that tele-commuting was the ‘magical buzzword’ on the US microcomputing scene. In the 1990s, the UK had 200 ‘telecottages’: rural workspaces with computers, communications and social

Tuesday

Kate Andrews

Are Britain’s employment figures too good to be true?

Lining up graphs of the UK’s growth figures last week and its employment figures this week, you would struggle to believe the data was from the same decade, let alone the same month. Despite the economy contracting by a quarter in March and April, unemployment figures haven’t budged: 3.9 per cent ending the month of April, unmoved from the quarter before, and more remarkably only up 0.1 per cent from the previous year.  The employment rate remains surprisingly high too: 76.4 per cent, down 0.1 per cent on the previous quarter. Despite the shuttering of the economy, employment and unemployment continue to hover at record highs and lows, like they