Can't see the wood for the trees? You need our free industry newswire
DWP White Paper - 'Building Britain’s Recovery'
Updated 17/12 - DWP published their White Paper on Tuesday, aimed at 'Building Britain's Recovery: Achieving Full Employment'. I've had a good read through, and would defnitely recommend reading the summary which is here, as it really is full of content. The summary below is made up of useful excerpts I've picked out from the White Paper, including a bit of background to set out what the Bill is being based on.
Overall, there are a lot of reforms set out here, including more information on skills accounts, 'better off in work' credit, and additional plans to tackle youth unemployment. There is also a lot in there for working families, lone parents, carers, and people with disabilities. This White Paper is by no means a short-term plan to fend off the recession, but outlines reform in all key areas - more powers to Jobcentre Plus staff, Housing Benefit reform, a review of Pathways to Work, and an aim to work back up towards full employment.
In addition, the White Paper also introduces the 'fit note' to replace the traditional 'sick note' for individuals with health related issues. A single budget has also been announced with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to fund training for the unemployed, marking a joint effort to help people not only find work, but advance their potential in order to remain in long-term, skilled roles. A very comprehensive White Paper, but some uncertainty as to whether its passage through the Commons will be completed before the General Election.
The guiding aim
Our aim is to provide a universal service that does more to help everyone, whether they are unable to work, progressing towards work, actively searching for work, at risk of losing work or wanting to change their job. Support, and funding, should be wrapped around the needs of the individual, not the benefit.
Background
Unemployment has risen, with 1.64 million people now claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA), and young people making up a disproportionate share of this group.
We have not seen the rise of inactivity and long-term unemployment that characterised the 1980s and 1990s recessions and people continue to find new employment quickly. In fact, there are over 400,000 fewer people claiming JSA than predicted earlier in the year.
Jobcentre Plus has worked well to help much larger numbers of people back into work and ensuring the benefits have continued to be paid on time despite the large rise in volumes.
Unemployment is still expected to rise into the New Year. This White Paper sets out our proposals to tackle the effects of the recession and to get back to full employment in the future. In particular, it announces substantial new measures to ensure the recession does not give young people the worst possible start to their working lives.
Our approach is not just to get people into work, but to keep them in work, and to build a fair and family-friendly labour market where everyone has the opportunity to develop their skills and experience.
Approach to the labour market
Nearly everyone of working age on benefit is now expected to be seeking work or preparing to work in future.
[Before the recession] more people were in work than ever before, claimant unemployment had reached its lowest level for over 30 years.
Despite this strong position, the sheer scale of the global recession has hit the UK very hard.
Firms and employees have co-operated, through flexible working hours and wage restraint, to reduce the fall in employment, with firms anxious to retain skilled staff who will drive growth in the upturn.
Previous recessions left deep scars as those hit by long-term unemployment found it hard to get work even when the economy and jobs started growing again. That is why we have been determined to prevent the growth in long-term unemployment, particularly among young people, that we saw in the 1980s and 1990s.
From recession to recovery
We ensured Jobcentre Plus and our specialist employment providers could continue to provide a high-quality service to the growing number of people seeking jobs. We supported the voluntary sector, by pledging an additional £60 million in England to help volunteers, charities and social enterprises deliver real help to those that need it most.
We made additional support available to help people before they became unemployed, including an expansion of the Jobcentre Plus Rapid Response Service.
Young people in the recession
The September Guarantee gives every 16–17-year-old a guaranteed offer of a place in learning and, in the 2009 Budget, we announced that every 18–24-year-old will be guaranteed a job, training or other meaningful activity before they reach 12 months of their unemployment claim.
We have already set out funding for over 300,000 additional youth training and job opportunities – including the £1 billion Future Jobs Fund, and more further and higher education places and apprenticeships.
Increased support young people
- a dedicated personal adviser from day one of their unemployment claim and more time with an adviser throughout their claim;
- extra support for 16–17-year-olds from Jobcentre Plus, working closely with local Connexions services;
- a new subsidy for employers taking on 16–17-year-old apprentices;
- a January guarantee for 16–17-year-olds who are not in education, employment or training (NEET) of an offer of an Entry to Employment place, and Education Maintenance Allowance to go with it;
- a new Young Person’s Guarantee for 18–24-year-olds that, if they are still unemployed after six months, they will be offered a job, training or internship and will be required to take it up before they complete 10 months on JSA;
- the Graduate Guarantee that graduates still unemployed at six months will be offered a graduate internship or other support, as announced in the Queen’s Speech; and
- over 100,000 government-funded additional training and job opportunities, on top of the 300,000 we have already pledged
Alongside this White Paper, the government are publishing Investing in Potential, the Government’s strategy to increase the proportion of 16–24-year-olds in education, employment or training in England.
Support for other groups
The White Paper also sets out plans for more personalised support to help everyone get back into work, including:
- More help for those who suffer lots of short spells of unemployment by fast tracking them to stronger support;
- More tailored support for the over-50s, including help to tackle age discrimination and fast tracking to more support; and
- Increasing the support for professionals from private sector recruitment agencies.
While the immediate focus is on preventing long-term unemployment, [the government] are also exploring the best ways to support the even smaller minority of people who reach 24-months unemployment. This paper sets out our plans to explore further support for people in this group, with a focus on mandatory activity, personalised support and enhanced help in unemployment hotspots.
Getting back to full employment
This White Paper reiterates our ambition for full employment that eight out of every ten people of working age should be in employment.
Our new ambition [is] to get over one million more people into work over the next five years as the economy grows. This is significantly greater than the fall in employment we have seen so far in this recession.
Ensuring a recovery – partnerships and self-employment
We recognise the vital role that local authorities and their partners must play in supplementing national support through locally-tailored and designed services that respond to local needs, opportunities and circumstances. Jobcentre Plus, local authorities and other local partners will work together to tackle worklessness and the causes of worklessness, consistent with the principles of Total Place.
Job growth also depends on promoting enterprise and entrepreneurship as the economy recovers and encouraging more people to start up their own businesses for the future too. We know that many people consider becoming self-employed when they are made redundant or leave education, or want to work flexibly while caring for young children or older relatives.
We want to make it easier for people who are unemployed to start their own business so we will bring forward advice, support and financial assistance earlier in their JSA claim, with intensive support and a self-employment allowance available from three months of unemployment. Advice will be available from day one.
Helping people to prepare for work
[People are facing unemployment from different positions. Some] need more support, perhaps gaining appropriate skills, building confidence, managing health conditions, or finding childcare. Some are ready to work straightaway.
We will now accelerate plans to make out-of-work partners of benefits recipients who can work look for a job – ending the historic anomaly whereby partners could claim benefit without seeking work when they are able to do so.
This White Paper announces important changes to the way we provide skills training for people out of work. We want to ensure that the training we offer is flexible enough to meet the needs of individuals and focused on the needs of the local labour market.
Skills accounts
Our skills reforms will be underpinned in England by the new skills accounts that will, for the first time, bring together in one place the skills training that an individual will be able to access in their local area. Skills accounts will help Jobcentre Plus advisers and individuals have a consistent and meaningful discussion about training options. We are also introducing new funding to ensure people on JSA who take up training have their travel and childcare costs paid.
Departmental coalition
To underpin these reforms, and make sure training funding is focused more effectively on helping the unemployed back to work, we will set up a single budget between the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to fund training for the unemployed.
Welfare reforms
Support for parents and carers
We also set out measures that will support people to balance work with their family life. Including:
- introducing new legislation which will allow lone parents who have a youngest child aged under 16 and are engaged in full-time study or training to claim Income Support in the summer period, instead of JSA;
- the launch of the Family Friendly Working Hours Taskforce which will look at what more needs to be done to make work more family friendly. The Taskforce will report in the spring;
- exploring how to best recognise those employers with exemplar flexible working practices, for example through a voluntary kitemark;
- trialling a low cost loan scheme – providing parents with affordable loans to cover the upfront costs of childcare;
- using improved IT and action through Jobcentre Plus to promote time-time vacancies and make it easier for people looking for part-time work; and
- making enterprise and employment support more accessible for parents by providing it in locations by schools.
We will carry out a consultation on how we can help people meet their caring responsibilities while remaining in work. This may include additional unpaid leave for planned responsibilities such as hospital visits and unpaid leave for carers of someone with a terminal illness.
For people with disabilities the White Paper pledges to:
- increase personalised help;
- roll out the new Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) and Work Capability Assessment to those currently on benefits;
- review Pathways to Work and increase health support for those on JSA;
- expand Work Choice and Access to Work to help move people into jobs; and
- introduce a national network of mental health co-ordinators in Jobcentre Plus. They will work with health services to co-ordinate mental health and employment support for individuals and help employment providers.
Better off in work
Our long-term ambition is a simpler system which could be based around a single working-age benefit and reformed Housing Benefit.
We want to do more to make sure the benefits of work are clear. The vast majority of people are much better off in work but we want to do more to make the benefits of work clearer. We will introduce a £40 a week Better off in Work Credit which will guarantee that everyone who moves into work after being on benefit for six or more months will be at least £40 a week better off.
Housing benefit
We have published a consultation on reforms to HB at the same time as this paper. The consultation includes measures to improve work, incentives and to help people make the transition from benefits into work. In particular:
- fixing HB payments at the out-of-work rate for three months when an individual moves off benefits into work;
- reducing the uncertainty surrounding HB payments by moving to fixed period awards (of up to six months); and
- ensuring the benefits system does not support customers to be housed in very high-cost accommodation that would be unaffordable if they moved off benefit.
[Will further increase work incentives for those with caring responsibilities and people with a disability or health condition by:]
- ensuring the benefits system encourages lone parents to try out work for a few hours a week as a stepping stone towards a move off benefits;
- widening access to free school meals for those in work, as announced in the Pre-Budget Report;
- raising the earnings limit within Carer’s Allowance from £95 to £100 a week; and
- considering the scope to passport people moving from ESA into work on to the disabled worker element (worth up to £48.50 a week) and 16-hours rule in Working Tax Credit.
This White Paper sets out our plans to launch the ‘fit note’ to replace the old ‘sick note’ and to provide greater support for employers to help them keep their employees in work. This includes piloting Fit for Work services, piloting an occupational health adviceline for small businesses, refreshing our business health check tool and developing an employer toolkit.
Jobcentre Plus reform
Jobcentre Plus in particular has responded with great effectiveness to the rise in unemployment and a dramatic increase in the demand for its services. But as the rate of increase in unemployment slows, we now have the opportunity to reflect on our response and consider where and how we should be improving our services.
We are moving towards the next stage of reform, piloting approaches where a single contractor has responsibility for getting people into work regardless of the type of benefit they are on, and encouraging them to help those in greatest need by paying more per job outcome the higher the proportion of people they get into work.
Trials
This White Paper concludes by setting out how we intend to deliver a welfare delivery system fit for the 21st century by:
- exploring different models of flexible, personalised support, including piloting a delegated flexibility model in four Jobcentre Plus districts;
- introducing a revised learning and development structure, offering advisers accreditation of their advisory skills;
- developing an extended online jobsearch facility with automated job matching and an integrated system of personal accounts;
- going forward, inviting local partners to have a greater influence and involvement in commissioning processes;
- increasing substantially Jobcentre Plus’ outreach services, working with local authorities and other partners in some of the most deprived parts of he country;
- working with private and voluntary sector providers to test approaches in which a contractor takes on people from different benefits and provides the help that individuals require to get into work, with payments increasing the higher proportion of people the contractor moves into sustainable jobs;
- building on the Total Place pilots to integrate better the support offered by Jobcentre Plus and other providers to ensure services are joined up and tailored to the specific needs of local communities; and
- reviewing the performance management structure for Jobcentre Plus and its partners with the aim of establishing a coherent single system based on sustained employment outcomes.
Resources
Comments
I hear Yvette Cooper has been to visit Pinnacle's FJF project in Westminster to see the success they are having combining their welfare to work and social housing businesses, and that their FJF customers were among those presented to Gordon Brown as part of his visit to Acton JCP to support the launch of the new White Paper and the extention of the Young Person's Guarantee.
Not a bad profile raiser for an up and coming provider looking to grow their portfolio!
That anonymous tag doesn't fool me!
Hi Daniel,
Just had quick read (not all) but it seems [moderation: the government] don't realise full employment isnt possible you can not produce jobs out of thin air. Also self employment isnt going to work if there's no new market for either the goods or services you provide plus surplus cash for people to spend in the economy.
No real help for people over 25+, I suppose FND provider's with this will foist self employment on alot of claimants with no real help or support.
Plus the government with the £40 better off than benefits will push people into jobs where after they pay out public transport costs and quite possibly doctor's perscriptions plus other costs will negate this benefit or they could only be at most 25 quid better off (peanuts in rip off britain).
Also no mention of the bias employers view the long term unemployed with.
This will be voted in by all political parties it wouldnt be so bad if they wasn't lieing deceitful scumbags themselves (Hint the "Were closing on benefit thieves adds" pity they don't consider themselves).
This paper in reality is all about very flexible job markets and making the UK more competitive with china and the far east at the expense of the working people.
Well Ala Gre to most things with reasoned arguments but bitter Doley where do you get off?? Why should tax payers pay for your perscriptions or "other costs" try to be positive and get a job if you dont have one or go self employed and at least try. Become an advcate for others or something but dont just winge
@Bitter doley: I should probably moderate your post, as it's clearly offensive. However, I doubt anyone is likely to be offended. I will definitely moderate any further rants, as they can easily overwhelm other discussion.
Oh and by the way Ala Gre I am looking for work in fact its what i spend most of my time doing (Hence i do not post in these types of forum often). I also do voluntary work and study to improve my chances of work.
I must sympathise with Bitter doley, her/his statement makes common sense. Having tried to compete in the market with services already established or overly accessible, does in fact drain you and waste what little resources one may have. The only reason I see Ala Gre perpetuating this situation is so that the Providers can get rich quick off Tax Payers money. Hardly a service that I would warrant "Good Value for Tax Payers" it would make much more sense to just give that money direct to those who need it to make ends meet.
If there is to be a real job market accessible to those trying to get a job, the only way I see it would be a massive reduction in the number of hours people work each week. A much welcomed respite to taxpayers that would reduce their need for prescriptions for societies ills. Its not our fault we need them is it really, its just a condition borne out of the way we are forced to live, so why shouldn't it be publicly accessible to all.
Maybe if you took a stroll out from your duck house you might realise that, if you don't live rich, then stop working against your own people. jobsworth.
I dont sympathise with him one bit you moan coz you would only be £25 aweek better off welcome to the real world. Were closing on benefit thieves good on them anyone who gets caught doing cash in hand should never be able to claim dole again!!!!!!!!!!!! No real help for people over 25+, totaly agree
Getting back to the point....
I can't say there's much in here that anyone in principle would really disagree with. The real problem is it doesn't add up to much in the way of a strategy, and even if it did, isn't it a bit late in the Parliament to be thinking these things up now? They've had 12 years for God's sake.
When you reduce it all to basics you find it's a bit "we're going to teach the world to sing" with not very much about either why they think these things might work now, why it's taken this long for them to think of it, or where they are magically summoning up the money from to pay from it all. (Actually the last answer is obvious - borrowing, which they are trying to pretend will never have to be paid back.)I have no real problem with the stuff in here - it's just so.....uninspiring.
hi highpark1,
have you even tried to live on dole money? if your a decent person (like i am) and not a benefits thief its hardly fun, yes alot of these idea's are good but currently and with the current situation things are not good plus as i have stated before full employment in a post industrial society is not possible.
I hope you realise that my work ie job seeking will not end over Xmas i will even have to make an effort even then when its pointless. You see i have less rights than you im lucky to have a roof over my head the job centre could easily change that.
lastly i hope you realise this 40 quid topup is to force people into low hours min wage jobs its never going to be for 30+ hours per week(30+ hours qualifies you for working tax credit anyway under the current system) or people on the min wage and working full time.
You may not sympathise with me about my situation that is your choice however i will say my situation was not of my making it was caused by long term illness then an equally long term jobseeking because i have had to change career. As we all know if your out of work a year or more its incredibly difficult to get back in the work place.
have you even tried to live on dole money? well yes i have and yes i do, i am what they class as long term unemployed very long term! up till a few months ago i had no savings etc and i lived off my jsa my rent paid and all that, when there is work i have been doing Agency work why cant Agency worker get the £40 top up!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i dont really do min wage jobs but if someone offerd me 1 now i would do it i would even do a job now for the same money as i get on the dole just to get me working again even an agency job, couple a weeks ago i did 2 courses that should help me get a job but as yet am still getting nowere but it will come. good luck with you job search over christmas
every time i post on here it posts 2 times why???
Hi all, please do try and keep the comments 'on topic', as they are veering into the personal side of things a bit and we don't want to have to moderate too much. Thanks!
We seem to have strayed far away from the key theme of the Gov't strategy to the intricacies of living on JSA... a pleasure many of us on this forum have experienced and to which few would wish to return.
The key theme of the new "strategy" appears to be the maintenance of "New Contractualism" and the entire concept of welfare-to-work. Indeed, it is of interest to note the general theme of previous responses has largely endorsed (without question) the notion of the need to encourage claimants to seek work, with powers to instigate consequences if they refuse employment. It would be interesting to research how many alumni of training providers end up working in jobs falling below their professional/ academic experience.
I hesitate to suggest providers 'force' clients into menial work. However, in the recent FND2 bidding round it has been interesting to note how many providers work closely with supermarket chains and charity shops. Is this because of the client group and their lack of qualification resulting in them having to take lower paid employment? Or is it that providers are paid on results - and job entry (regardless of the job) is undoubtedly a result. Clearly some kind of detailed independent evaluation is required and it is a shame the Government steered away from the opportunity to conduct such a review.
Secondly, the White Paper indicates a vision of securing full employment, but is this achievable in a post-industrial Britain? All the major parties are in the run up to a general election, so of course they are anxious to tout their wares, including offering proposals of how they can put Britain back to work. The reality is that since the birth of capitalism there has never been full employment. I would therefore suggest they are proposing an unachievable economic ideal rather than a strategic reality and we should not be fooled into assuming that these proposals will achieve their stipulated goals.
Third, they are suggesting more ways they intend to help young people - 'Guarantees' of various kinds, as well as closer work with Connexions. Many of these proposals target poorly qualified younger people. All this at a time when recent figures have shown that unemployment is rising fastest among 18-24-year-olds with degrees. One in five unemployed people has a degree, up from one in six three years
ago. Unemployment has risen 5.8 percent for 18-24 year-olds since the start of the recession and while the number of unemployed graduates increased 3.5 percent, the number of unemployed people with no qualifications better than GCSE decreased.
Fourth. (and finally, although there are so many other flaws in this document), the White Paper offers a variety of ideas to support disabled people back into work - increases in Work Choice, improvements in Pathways to Work etc. However, all these are 'patch repair' proposals without looking at the deeper problem. Firstly, the job entry rate for Pathways to work is generally rather poor (http://indusdelta.co.uk/story/official_statistics_pathways_to_work_relea...) and begs the question of whether in its present form it actually offers value for money. Secondly, Work Choice will replace the old Workstep programme and while the final delivery plan remains a little unclear, the broad line seems to be that it offers little (beyond a number of different delivery agents) that is truly innovative, so consequently we should not expect too much to change for a community that is frequently hardest hit by worklessness and poverty.
Apologies Daniel for my long tirade - I guess I have become very cynical about our political masters and their ability create effective policies to engage and support the jobless.
fundamental misunderstanding of economics old chap. Full employment merely means there are more vacancies than jobseekers. So defined, we've seen plenty of times when this is true with respect to the UK as a whole, even in the last decade.
misunderstanding 2 - you can't actually claim for clients working in charity shops as it is voluntary, so that point is fairly redundant.
misunderstanding 3 - the problem with young people is those with degrees. You have to think carefully about life chances here - young people with degrees still have strong life chances because they are aspirational and retain a competitive advantage over their peers. The recession is painful, but they will get through it. The difficulty is with those without those aspirations and skills, they are the ones in danger of being left behind due to the recession and becoming a permanent JSA claimant statistic. The government's FJF and CTF are a sensible response to this. I fail to see how they could support those with degrees much more than they are anyway - there is nothing wrong with Future Jobs Fund work to tie you over.
misunderstanding 4 - no Workstep contracts have been awarded, yet alone delivered so how can you say nothing innovative is occurring without having read the bids? Unless you work for the DWP and it doesn't sound like you do?
It's fine to be cynical and so am I, but pick your targets properly. Private sector provision of employability has generally been reasonably successful and there is good reason to suggest that the more autonomy it gets, the better performance will be (c.f. Employment Zones).
Several points spring to mind regarding the points made above.
Firstly (and working backwards if I may), you indicate that private sector provision has been successful, but I am not aware of any independent analysis that has ever truly reviewed its effectiveness. Of course, we can explore job entry rates and make assumptions, but does this equate with ‘success’? I would propose that to be effective the entire sector would have to be willing to subject itself to scrutiny. Now whilst this is unlikely to happen, I would suggest that the more reputable training providers would have little to fear and could possibly gain from this endeavour. Furthermore, it would ensure a standard of excellence that we have yet to achieve through OfSTED etc. and allow us to explore some of the key issues a detailed qualitative analysis would yield. I, for one would welcome a study of the 'rich picture' of client observations of their experience of services offered by training providers.
Secondly, whilst the Work Choice contracts will not be offered until after February, 2010 the specification read like little more than a reinvention of Workstep with a requirement for better performance. Of course, it may be that there are a number of providers out there who are willing to be highly creative and innovative, but given the budget available for this contract I find that unlikely.
Third, I do completely take your point about the advantage of being a graduate and the potential job opportunities it offers. I fear that when New Labour came to power they did not think through their post-compulsory education ideology and now they are ‘reaping the rewards’. However, as you correctly argue it is not unreasonable to assume that ultimately they will not obtain employment. As to whether the non-graduate population have been served well by the proposals in the White Paper – that remains to be seen. Whilst strategies to reduce the number of NEET young people must be welcomed, the target of reducing this number by 2% has to be seen as modest at best. However, the proposal to increase the number of apprenticeships by 35,000 must be welcomed. I suppose we must only hope that the banks loan British industry enough money to expand before they pay out their own staff bonuses. There again, perhaps the apprenticeships are in the banking system!!
Fourthly, on re-reading my earlier submission I appreciate I was a little unclear. I am not suggesting that providers claim for customers who work in charity shops. However, I do believe that many see this as a ‘success’ – a view I suspect is frequently disputed by the customer at this time of year when costs and spending over the Yuletide can be so prohibitive.
Finally, on the subject of full employment I stand corrected and I take your point - it is a point well made. However, I still remain doubtful as to whether we will see full employment for some considerable time. This recession has had far-reaching effects on our economy and the social fabric of many communities and I feel we will be paying the consequence for some years to come. The political hectoring from all parties of how their policies will bring about a stable economy with full employment are (in my view) little more than the pre-election hype you would expect to read in the run up to winning our hearts at the ballot box.
"Full employment merely means there are more vacancies than jobseekers. So defined, we've seen plenty of times when this is true with respect to the UK as a whole, even in the last decade."
Dangerboy - with respect. While the government statistics may have shown more vacancies than jobseekers in the recent past, these statistics cannot be taken at face value. Most figures of available vacancies are heavily influenced by the Jobcentre Plus database. Anyone who checks the JCP database (and many websites aren't much better) regularly will know all about the "local jobs" on the other side of the country, the useless hour-a-day cleaning jobs that won't even cover the worker's travelling expenses, the vast amount of agency spam advertising jobs that were filled last week, the bored housewives' jobs (reps for Avon, Kleeneze, Betterware etc), the spurious self employed jobs where the boss wants to avoid paying employer's NI contributions - not to mention all the thinly disguised pyramid scams and other get-rich-quick schemes of dubious legality. Essentially, the government started abusing the system when the economy was supposedly booming (not that it ever did boom throughout much of the country) - up to the time of the Northern Rock crisis - by fraudulently including many of these types of non-jobs on the system to boost the vacancy figures and justify more "cracking down on the scroungers" in order to chase easy votes from the right and approval from journalists and pub experts everywhere. This is continuing even now to hide the true depth of the recession.
At the present time in Britain there are not enough jobs to go around. Nor have there been - not really - for the whole of the last 10 years that I have been involved with the system. Without major change I do not believe that there ever will be again. How bad will things have to get before politicians can admit this, instead of this constant striving to talk tougher than their opponents?
Herald - with respect. In most regions less than 50% of all vacancies are advertised. The vast majority of job vacancies are part of the "hidden" or "closed" job market. They are filled through word of mouth, speculative approaches, and previous applicant lists. The better the job, the less likely the position will be advertised at all. Networking is by far the most effective job search tool you can use. Of those vacancies that are advertised, only between 30-50% are advertised in JCP depending on the locality and skill level of the vacancy. There's plenty of evidence to support that statement as well.
Additionally, in the last 10 years we have seen full employment - during 2004/2005 we were certainly in a jobseekers market. Many employers were crying out for staff, and we experienced major skills shortages. It was that situation that prompted the Leitch review of skills published in 2006. Even now there are still jobs available. The problem is not the lack of jobs available, its the perception of those jobs. We still hear the phrase McJob used - I for one would rather be in a McJob than no job as I will never be "too good for that job". Unfortunately as somebody who's been in this industry a long time, I know that's not the belief of some jobseekers.
"In most regions less than 50% of all vacancies are advertised. The vast majority of job vacancies are part of the "hidden" or "closed" job market." Chunky - I've heard that soooooo many times over the last 10 years and I don't believe it any more now than I did the first time. If vacancies are in a "hidden" or "closed" market as you suggest, then how do you (or anyone else) know they exist? I see people all the time who send out several speculative applications each week to likely employers - some have been doing it for years - and yet get absolutely nowhere. Most long-term claimants feel, from practical experience, that the speculative approach is largely pointless, and I agree with them.
Also, you state that "networking is by far the most effective job search tool you can use" - is it? For somebody who's never worked, or looking to move into a different area of work? For any person networking is only as useful as that person's contacts. This statement, I feel, has the appearance of being lifted from a textbook aimed at professionals/managers wishing to change jobs in order to leapfrog up the career ladder. For the "average" jobseeker it is largely an irrelevance, and "networking" consists of rumours amongst claimants that X factory in Y town might be taking on - except usually, it isn't.
"Of those vacancies that are advertised, only between 30-50% are advertised in JCP depending on the locality and skill level of the vacancy." Granted. But 30-50% is still enough to skew the figures. Also, due to levels of skills and qualifications, never mind aspirations, and particularly in depresed areas, these 30-50% of vacancies towards the bottom end of the labour market are all that is relevant to most claimants. In my area of South Wales the only significant numbers of vacancies NOT advertised through JCP are the ones requiring degrees and/or experience that most people don't have.
"Even now there are still jobs available. The problem is not the lack of jobs available, its the perception of those jobs." Well, the figure for "whole economy" vacancies - which is based on employer surveys (www.ons.gov.uk/...economic.../summary-quality-report-for-the-vacancy-sur... - ) rather than a simple tally by Jobcentre Plus, and thus should show a lot of these "hidden" jobs if they do in fact exist - shows
432,000 vacancies to be chased by either 2,491,000 unemployed or 1,626,200 JSA claimants, whichever you prefer. How can you possibly interpret this as anything but a lack of jobs?
"...During 2004/2005 we were certainly in a jobseekers market. Many employers were crying out for staff, and we experienced major skills shortages." Well, it wasn't a jobseeker's market here - maybe in London, but I doubt even that. And what did the government do to solve those skills shortages? Rather than train native jobseekers it brought in migrant labour and left those jobseekers rotting on the dole. OK, that's a rather simplistic view of it, but why not bring in skilled migrants - IF it was really necessary - on a temporary basis while our own long-term unemployed went to college and learnt a trade as a condition of continuing to receive JSA? Most I know would jump at the chance. It would have been far more productive than ND/EZ, as it would now be more productive than FND. There are many jobseekers who have been through numerous cycles of the old New Deal - are you suggesting that they liked it? People are not unemployed because they are lazy, they are unemployed because nobody will give them a job.
"I for one would rather be in a McJob than no job as I will never be "too good for that job". Unfortunately as somebody who's been in this industry a long time, I know that's not the belief of some jobseekers." If only the vacancies we are talking about were as secure, as flexible, and offered similar opportunities for advancement as McJobs. Real McJobs are in reality far superior to most employment offered in modern Britain, the catalogue reps, pointless hour-a-day cleaning jobs and agency shrapnel I refer to. Is it really too much to expect for the government, the media and people like Chunky to get real, get down to the average jobseeker's level and see how bad things really are? Is it really too much to expect the employers to raise their game a little in order to recruit and retain staff? Is it right in what is supposedly a modern democracy for the government via its departments or contractors to be essentially forcing people to work for the worst employers? I think not, and yet that is what happens now. I have seen the same employers advertising the same old jobs, at the same intervals, as regularly as clockwork - sometimes for years - and I know there MUST be something wrong with that job. And yet people are still being used, still being forced to apply with the threat of benefit sanctions if they do not. It's just wrong, Chunky, as wrong as you are. You've been reading too many newspapers, and worse still, believing them.
I stand by my original statement. At the present time in Britain there are not enough jobs to go around. Nor have there been - not really - for the whole of the last 10 years that I have been involved with the system. Without major change I do not believe that there ever will be again. How bad will things have to get before politicians can admit this, instead of this constant striving to talk tougher than their opponents?
Another christmas cracked.... pity that it will get no further than Labours Election Pamphlet never to be heard of again.