Jobs

It is a long time since the term ‘sick man of Europe’ could be applied to Britain. France is now a worthier candidate for the accolade — it -increasingly resembles a tribute act to 1970s Britain. A package of modest labour-market reforms presented by a socialist president has provoked national strikes on the railways and Air France. This week, the streets of Paris resembled one big Grunwick or Saltley Gate — the trials of strength between employer and union in which so many of Britain’s most bolshy trade unionists cut their teeth. This week is not a one-off: in recent years France has had a strike rate more than twice

A recent Coffee House blog quite rightly noted that many British people are concerned that high levels of immigration have hurt their jobs, wages and quality of life, and noted too that this anxiety is understandable as workers have had a rough ride in recent times. Yet the authors, self-styled data-crunchers from the LSE, say that ‘the bottom line is that EU immigration has not significantly harmed the pay, jobs or public services enjoyed by Britons’. One might think that the lack of harm, let alone significant harm, is a poor argument for anything. On pay, real wages are little different from a decade ago. The counterfactual — which surely is

There are strict rules governing the language that MPs can use in the House of Commons. Words like ‘guttersnipe’, ‘stoolpigeon’ and ‘hypocrite’ are considered unparliamentary, and MPs can be chucked out of the Chamber for the rest of the day if they do not withdraw their comments. Sadly, though, they can get away with behaviour that is quite unparliamentary in the sense that it undermines the purpose of parliament on a regular basis. This unparliamentary behaviour popped up at today’s Work and Pensions Questions, but it occurs in almost every departmental question session, and at Prime Minister’s Questions too. It is the Utterly Pointless Question, one in which an MP

NOTE: Applications are now closed. Summer’s coming, and we’re looking for interns to spend a week or two with us here at The Spectator. We’re looking for people who love good journalism and understand how digital media works. The position will be paid (but not very much). We don’t mind where or whether you have gone to university; Frank Johnson was a superb editor of this magazine and he left school aged 16 (as have some of our editors). What matters is flair, imagination and enthusiasm: skills that you can’t really learn in any classroom. We’re not looking for writers, per se: The Spectator is blessed with a large number of brilliant freelance writers

The Prime Minister no doubt knew he would be fanning the flames when he waded into the argument about the admission of black undergraduates to universities like Oxford and Cambridge. We should do him the courtesy of trusting he means it when he says he feels strongly about discrimination in the awarding of university places – and I think he does. In this week’s issue Toby Young marks David Cameron’s essay with tutorial authority, and finds his case wanting. Particularly valuable among Toby’s marginal notes is his point that you can’t accept applicants if they haven’t applied – and black and working-class students disproportionately don’t. But we enter a vicious

The Spectator is creating a new position, fusing together the work of print, digital and broadcast journalism. We’re looking for someone who can write, loves language and loves intelligent debate – but the emphasis, for this job, will be on audio and video. It’s a great time to join Britain’s  most influential magazine. We recently celebrated the highest sales in our 185-year history; both print and digital are rising, our website is now read by two million people a month. But the staff team is small; there are only about a dozen of us. There is growing demand for our video and podcasts, and we need someone to help us meet that demand

Another milestone has been reached in the recovery: 73.6pc of working-aged British people are now in employment (see above) – the highest in recorded history. And, needless to say, the highest of any country in Europe. What kind of jobs? Mainly full-time employees (up 2.1pc) not self-employment (down 0.6pc). The total number of hours worked is also up, and Britain is working almost a billion hours a week. Unemployment is down, and as Michael Saunders from Citi notes (pdf):- The drop has been concentrated in the long-term jobless rate (ie the share of the workforce who have been out of work for more than 12 months), which has dropped from 2.2% a year

The Spectator is looking for an assistant production editor, to help us produce our magazine and supplements. The job will be three days a week, ideally Tuesday to Thursday, and initially on a six-month contract. What kind of person are we looking for? You are a careful, rapid and sensitive text sub capable of hitting tight deadlines with grace, and comfortable creating elegant layouts from template in Indesign. Your proofreading is reliable and judicious. Your headlines are both witty and to the point; you also know to rethink them so that they fly on the web and via social media. You can keep complex publishing projects running smoothly to timetable,

‘Two million jobs have been created since 2010 — but there will not be a moment of rest until we have reached our goal,’ said David Cameron in a Telegraph article a fortnight before the election: ‘Two million more jobs; or full employment in Britain.’ It was a bold statement. Indeed you might think, given unemployment at 1.84 million in the winter quarter, that the target for new jobs was actually an error on the part of who-ever drafts the Prime Minister’s prose. Either way, it drew little attention amid the smoke of battle. But now the air has cleared it merits revisiting, because it connects all the key themes

At the Hannover Messe robotics fair in Germany yesterday, UK company Mobey Robotics launched the world’s first robot chef, capable of watching and mimicking the kitchen skills of a human chef and recreating them with superhuman consistency. There is already a restaurant in Soho with touch-screen tables where you can place your order and pay your bill, and restaurants in Japan where robotic waiters serve food. As these new technologies become cheaper and more widely available, they are likely to replace the need for human labour in restaurants altogether. If you find this a bit unlikely, remember that we’ve already accepted robots at the supermarket checkout, the airport check-in, the

Britain has reached its highest ever level of employment. According to new figures from the ONS, the employment rate has risen to 73.2 per cent — or close to 31 million people in work. This stands as the joint highest rate since records began in 1971. Unemployment is down to 1.86 million. The short-term jobless rate is also at its lowest rate since 1992. Pay is also increasing, with private sector earnings (excluding bonuses) up 2.1 per cent year-on-year at the end of 2014. Youth unemployment has increased slightly, something Esther McVey has described as a ‘tiny blip.’ But never in British history have there been so many job vacancies. Never