Lies, big lies and statistics
Unemployment totals
In the BBC debate Should benefits be linked to community service?, one cynic asked if this was really another excuse for the government to fiddle the official unemployment statistics. That cynic is absolutely correct. I'd like to know how the official unemployment statistics and the number of unemployed people returned to work supposedly as a result of New Deal are worked out. We know that the official unemployment statistics cannot be trusted under governments of any political persuasion these days.
So many people are out of work but are excluded from unemployment statiustics.
Official resources
How the British government measures unemployment discuusses the production of unemployment statistics in general terms but doesn't give a clear set of rules, perhaps because they like to keep a few secrets. I've taken a quick look at How the American government measures unemployment and it appears to be more comprehensive. One thing I noticed is that the United States accept the concept of labour under-utilisation and publish data about it.
Can we trust these explanations and are they meaningful anyway?
International definitions
It seems that people are classified broadly as employed (those who work for at least one hour per week including unpaid jobs), unemployed (those who don't work but want one and are looking for one) or economically inactive (those who aren't looking for a job). As with so many classifications in other aspects of life, these categories are not as clear-cut as they may at first appear, and given the international definition of employment, it's easy to see why there is a need for data about labour under-utilisation.
Two sets of UK statistics
As discussed in How the British government measures unemployment, there are two methods of measuring unemployment. One is the internationally recognized method of market research. I've never found such surveys convincing, because I generally avoid them like the plague and I suspect that a lot of people do. When I see somebody with a clipboard, I normally take avoiding action.
The second method is to count those people who are actually claiming benefits and who fit the definition of unemployed people. Whether the British definition matches the international definition of unemployment is unclear to me. In any event, the way in which people are classified will be the same however the data is collected. The results differ because the market research method gives us some idea about the status of those people who do not claim benefits.
People on placements
People on New Deal placements are not counted as unemployed. Slave labour schemes (or should that be slave Labour schemes?) don't constitute employment in my mind; certainly not in 21st century Britain. Yet it seems that these schemes count as employment according to the international definition of employment.
Female retirement age
Men over the female retirement age don't count in the official unemployment statistics either. They are given pension credits - in effect, pensioned off early. Given forthcoming changes to the state pension age for women, it will be interesting to see whether the government finds a way to fiddle the official unemployment statistics to hide the underlying increase in unemployment. When the female retirement age catches up with the male retirement age, the anomaly of unemployed men retiring earlier than employed men will disappear forever.
Incapacity benefit
The Conservatives, when they were the government prior to 1997, set up the incapacity benefit system specifically to exclude disabled people from the official unemployment statistics. Now, because of the costs involved, politicians of all parties are keen to reverse things. Like the changes to the state pension age, this will damage the official unemployment statistics unless they are fiddled again.
Other exclusions
I'm sure that both the Conservatives and Labour have excluded other people from the official unemployment statistics in various ways, but I don't know all the details. In July 2008, the government said that the total number of out-of-work benefit claimants was 4.5 million. Even that figure wasn't the true level of unemployment at the time, because some unemployed people don't register, as I didn't for more than six years during The nineties job quest. I understand that the real number of unemployed people is well over 5 million but I wouldn't be surprised if it is 7 or 8 million. We'll probably never know.
One thing is clear. As anybody currently on New Deal doesn't count as unemployed, the scheme won't be replaced by one that counts those people in the official unemployment statistics.
Vacancy totals
The government is keen to mention the number of job vacancies as a counter to worsening official unemployment statistics. Most of these vacancies will be filled by people currently employed in other jobs. Their old jobs will usually become vacancies, and so the process will continue. In any case, it takes some time for a vacancy to be filled from its initial announcement. I also wonder how these statistics are calculated, since some jobs are advertised in many different places. Don't be deluded by vacancy statistics.
Trends in job vacancies can easily be observed by looking at local newspapers. In the boom years, there were sometimes 20 or more pages devoted to jobs in the Leicester Mercury and I can remember regarding 16 pages as a bad week. Later, it became merely disappointing, then normal. In 2009, eight pages would be brilliant. The Birmingham Mail used to have an abundance of vacancies advertised each week, but they didn't have many pages in 2009 either. Indeed, they sometimes had fewer pages than the Leicester Mercury. I can accept that the trend to posting vacancies on the internet may account for part of the drop, but we'll only know the true extent of this trend when we hit the next boom period. In any case, vacancies advertised on the internet are also far fewer than they once were, while some vacancies are advertised in newspapers as well as on the internet.
Government acclaims "New Deal"
New Deal has been the most successful innovation in the history of the UK labour market. In the last decade, New Deal has helped more than 1.85 million people into work.
Don't believe a word of it. We'll look at further governmentclaims about New Deal in A look back at New Deal.
Uri Geller more believable
If you believe the official unemployment statistics, you may also believe Uri Geller's explanation of Scotland's penalty miss in a match against the England football team at the old Wembley stadium.
No comments:
Post a Comment