Unemployment down - Out of work rises

[hyperD]

Found it from the ONS

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/downloa...employment.pdf

If you can keep your eyes open long enough, at the end of the doc is a summary. While I was referring to people who could work, the total "economically inactive" total is 9.3m:

Unemployed: 1.4m
Looking after family/home: 2.3m
Long term sick: 2.2m
Students: 1.8m
Other inactive: 1.7m

Total: ~9.4m

That's either a a third of the working population or around 20% of the total population of the UK out of work or economically inactive.

[Lucifer Box]

Seems fair. Someone who flips burgers by day and stacks shelves by night to make ends meet clearly counts as -2 on the jobless totals. You wait and see, soon we'll have negative unemployment.

[bfg]

Back of an envelope calculation indeed. The official figure for "out of work" is actually 7.91 million, but nice of you to spin the figure a bit lower. Tony would be proud of you.

That cannot be true, you see Germany has terrible unemployment and their economy is on the verge of collapse, the papers and Saint Tony tell us this.

7.91 million when factored for the size of population makes us much worse than Germany so this is impossible when we have such fantastically low unemployment and our economy is surging ahead under GB's brilliant stewardship.

[OwlHoot]

New Labour are masters at making the key headline stats work for them, either by changeing what is being counted (aka reclasify unemployed job seekers) or change how the whole calculation is done

Yep - A couple of months ago someone staying at the same B&B as me did a runner without paying, and when the owner reported this to the police some pipsqueek back-office civilian clerk at the cop shop smugly informed him that this was no longer classed as a crime but was solely a civil matter.

He then phoned a local magistrate, to clarify the legal situation, and upon hearing what the clerk had claimed she roared "Poppycock - of course it's a crime, obtaining goods or services by deception!" He had the clear impression she had encountered this before and wasn't at all pleased.

Having now left the B&B (after finishing my previous contract) I'm not sure how it turned out. But apparently all police stations now have civilians taking details of cases over the phone, and their explicit instructions (with the help of pop-up information boxes on their PCs!) are to fob off as many cases as possible and transfer them to civil courts.

[Joe Bloggs]

oh yes, and don't forget: 2.7 million on paid-for-holiday, sorry, incapacity benefits

Apparently the Netherlands is the place to be for such things, where there's still nearly 1m receiving incapacity benefits in a population of just 16m.

A quick back of the envelope calculation gives:

938,000 (incapacity ben) / 16,407,491 (NL pop) = 5.7%
or 60,441,457 (pop UK) * 5.7% = 3.45 m

Oh, and it's not a fixed rate which gets paid, but can be up to 80% of previous income.

http://www.rnw.nl/globalperspective2/html/rnw.html

[hyperD]

Back of an envelope calculation indeed. The official figure for "out of work" is actually 7.91 million, but nice of you to spin the figure a bit lower. Tony would be proud of you.

That seems high - where did you get that figure from?

[threaded]

Send all the unemployed back where they came from

They do that one in Denmark, the plod turn up on your doorstep, allow you 5 minutes to pack a bag, escort you to the nearest border.

[mcquiggd]

Send all the unemployed back where they came from!


Oops, thats me then

[Not So Wise]

To my mind the whole set of figures are complete bulltulip.

New Labour are masters at making the key headline stats work for them, either by changeing what is being counted (aka reclasify unemployed job seekers) or change how the whole calculation is done

Prime example why bodys like the office of national statistics should not be under political control. These days if you want to know wht is really going on with the country you need to get the data from the ONS and look at every componant calculation and recalculate the total yourself.

[DimPrawn]

Next you'll be telling me the economy is not in its best shape for 30 years, and that house prices aren't going up 20% next yr and that there are no WMD in the middle east!

[planetit]

Out of work: 2.7m

Back of an envelope calculation indeed. The official figure for "out of work" is actually 7.91 million, but nice of you to spin the figure a bit lower. Tony would be proud of you.

[hyperD]

To my mind the whole set of figures are complete bulltulip.

Add immigration, people drifting out of society, claimant fraud, changing unemployment reporting criteria, temp workers, visas, false jobs, black market, ....

.... oh yes, and don't forget: 2.7 million on paid-for-holiday, sorry, incapacity benefits.

So if you want a proper figure for UK unemployment, try this back of envelope calculation:

Unemployment: 1.4m
Incapacity bens: 1.3m (David Blunkett reckons that about half of the 2.7m people "on the sick" are capable of working).
---------------------
Out of work: 2.7m

Total workforce: 28.79m (in work) + 2.7m = 31.49

% out of work: ~9%

So next time you hear Bliar talk about "...lowest unemployment since the dinosaurs...", you know better.

[wc2]

Add 1000's of Immigrants comming into the UK.

That makes up the shortfall.

[DimPrawn]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4333688.stm

Unemployment fell by 7,000 between June and August to 1.42 million, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
This leaves the number of people in work at a record high of 28.76 million, the highest total since records began in 1971.

However, the number of people out of work and claiming benefits rose for the eighth month in a row in September.

Claimant count unemployment rose by 8,200 to 875,500.

The monthly figure was more than double than predicted by analysts, while August's rise was revised higher to 2,700 from 1,600 previously.

The figure was also 61,700 higher than at the start of the year, the ONS said.

Jobs continued to be lost in manufacturing, down 99,000 in the three months to August compared with a year earlier, reaching a record low of 3.18 million.



WTF?

The number of people out of work is falling, the number of people out of work is rising all against a continued backdrop of lost jobs.

To my mind the whole set of figures are complete bulltulip.