Unemployment

More positive economic news this morning — the unemployment rate has fallen. In the last three months, unemployment has taken a surprising drop to 7.4 per cent, compared to 7.6 per cent for the three months before. As the chart below shows, the unemployment rate is now lower than at any time since the general election, and the lowest since April 2009: The number of people claiming Jobseeekers’ Allowance is also down by 36,700 while average pay also rose by a slender 0.8 per cent compared to the previous year (still below the rate of inflation). Despite this, the figures are good news for the government. The Employment Minister Esther

People get competitive about the difficulty of their degrees. The accepted line at Oxford is that Science is harder than Arts, and everything is harder than PPE – three years of sleeping until 1pm and waffling about Mill’s Utilitarianism, and you still get to tell employers that you have a degree in economics. It’s probably true about the PPEists, but the Arts vs. Science stuff is a myth. Scientists’ claim to the tougher time is based on the fact that they have more contact hours. More contact hours, we are often told, make a more serious degree: it was reported as a scandal in May when Bahram Bekhradnia, director of

I remember, during one of my last classes at UCL, the topic of conversation turned from the cultural implications of Algerian independence to the subject of life after university. Our lecturer, a grumpy ‘progressive Hoxhaist’, told us that things had never been worse, and out of the 20 or so students in the room, only one or two would have found any kind of full-time employment by the time the year was out. ‘But it’s not fair!’ cried one girl, ‘we’ve all worked so hard over the last four years, we’re all clever [speak for yourself, I thought], we all have debts and we’re just going to be ignored!’ ‘Who

Jamie Oliver, eh, what a card? Why can’t Britain’s revolting poor eat better food? If they can afford televisions they can afford mussels and rocket too, don’t ya know? Something like that anyway. But instead they loaf in front of the goggle-box stuffing their fat faces with lardy ready-meals and fast food. What is to be done with them? And why can’t they be more like the Spanish or the Italians? Never mind that Italian children are more likely to be obese than British children. Never mind, too, that kids in impoverished southern Italy are more likely to be overweight than children in the wealthier north. Instead just fantasise about a

Unemployment is down, there are fewer people claiming jobseeker’s allowance, and more people are in work than ever before. So, the top line on today’s employment figures: They’re good news. The real picture is more nuanced. Unemployment is down by 4,000 on the previous quarter, a figure that is dwarfed by the margin of error. We might reasonably expect the real number of unemployed to be anywhere within 85,000 above or below the 2.51 million quoted. There have been nine straight months with fewer people claiming jobseeker’s allowance, but the unemployment rate is still 7.8% – just where it was in August 2012, and a meagre 0.1 percentage points lower than

As ever there’s good and bad news in today’s jobs numbers. Unemployment fell by 57,000, but the number of people in employment only rose by 16,000. The figures also show that the greying of the British economy continues. In May there were 8,000 fewer 16-64 year olds in work, and 25,000 more 65-pluses in work. Since the peak of employment in 2008 there are more than 300,000 more pensioners working. There’s one more thing that may turn out to be a big positive: Britons put in over 950 million hours in the last three months, that’s 0.4 per cent more than the previous quarter. According to the NIESR, GDP grew by

The number of people in work in December to February was 29.698 million — lower than last month’s 29.732 million and representing a very slight 2,000 quarter-on-quarter fall — according to today’s figures from the Office for National Statistics. Of course, 2,000 is just a 0.008 per cent drop, and since the margin of error for that change is ±139,000, the quarter could yet turn out to have been one of reasonable jobs growth. But in today’s figures, the lack of employment growth, while the economically active population continued to expand, meant that the unemployment level rose by 70,000 — its biggest quarter-on-quarter rise since September to November 2011. The

An unfamiliar noise floats over the town; an insistent, one-note metallic drone. Tracked to its source, it turns out to come from a sawmill in a hidden wooded valley a quarter of a mile from my house. Abandoned for the past year, the mill has suddenly come back to life. It is emitting great plumes of steam as well as a multi-decibel industrial racket. And men are working there — I can see only two or three, but still they constitute another little piece of the great employment puzzle. An uptick in demand for sawn timber matches reports of increased levels of activity in the construction and housebuilding sector. Sure

Today’s jobs figures are pretty unambiguously good news. The number of people in work rose by 154,000 in the last three months of 2012 to a new record high of 29.73 million — surpassing pre-recession peak by 158,000. And unlike other recent rounds of employment growth, this wasn’t driven by a rise in part-time workers (their number actually fell by 43,000). But there are still a couple of reasons cause to greet this good news with caution. Rising employment at a time of economic stagnation has come at the expense of earnings. Adjusted for CPI inflation, average weekly earnings have fallen by 7 per cent in the last five years,

Depending on which paper you read this morning, the government’s work experience scheme is either heading for the plug hole or going from strength to strength. The Guardian has an editorial praising Cait Reilly, the geology graduate who fought the workfare scheme she found herself on, The Telegraph says workfare can ‘still do the job for Britain’, and The Sun carries a bullish piece by Iain Duncan Smith on why the scheme is not ‘slave labour’. The problem is that everyone has managed to interpret yesterday’s Court of Appeal judgement as favouring their own view of the scheme. Reilly emerged yesterday with her lawyer to claim victory, but the Work

Dig out the bunting, fly the red flags in celebration, for finally we have a policy from the Labour party. Ed Miliband promised that 2013 would be the year he’d set out some ‘concrete steps‘ on key policy areas, and to that end he’s announced a jobs guarantee for the long-term unemployed. Coffee House readers will already be familiar with this scheme, as Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Liam Byrne discussed it in his interview on this site in December. But Miliband and Ed Balls have given the details today, with Balls writing an op-ed for PoliticsHome that says: A One Nation approach to welfare reform means government has a

Following my last post about the Dalkey Archive Press advert for unpaid interns I received an email from publisher John O’Brien. I think it sheds some interesting light on the issue so here it is in full: ‘What started out as an announcement of two hires and then hoped-for interns who would become hires (putting aside my “characteristics” sections, if you can), all internships are on hold and will quite likely not resume. We are deluged with requests (paid or unpaid) for internships, and usually take on more than we can properly handle because people are rather desperate to get the experience, without which they cannot get the first door

It’s a bit early for predictions for 2013. But my feeling is that it could be the year of the unpaid intern, or rather, the year of the paid intern if the campaign to pay people a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work continues to gather pace. Hazel Blears did well to secure cross-party support for a 10-minute-rule bill to outlaw the advertising of unpaid internships. It does seem odd that employers are obliged to pay the national minimum wage but can advertise that they are breaking the law. Campaigners Intern Aware has been pushing this particular cause for some time and should be congratulated for its work