Did JCP have a good or bad recession?
A rash of news stories last month were prompted by DWP research which (seemingly) reviewed the response by Jobcentre Plus to the recession. Commissioned from the Policy Studies Institute, the report was largely ignored for several weeks after its publication. Then Conservative Party researchers got to work on it ...
They trawled the report to find a series of mildly critical observations about the huge operational shift that Jobcentre Plus undertook as it geared itself up and reacted to the major policy shifts announced by the Government towards the end of 2008 as JSA unemployment began to rise sharply. Then they released it on the eve of last month's unemployment figures ... as a spoiler on a news story which suggested that the labour market had begun to turn for the better.
According to the Financial Times, “Jobcentre staff handling last year's surge in unemployment were under-trained, overstretched and worked with ‘contradictory’ instructions from government” http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8a49fba8-1b63-...
In the IT industry trade press, there was an emphasis on “IT problems that hindered Jobcentre Plus in dealing with an influx of people at the beginning of the recession.” There were “glitches and crashes in the service’s computerised job vacancies database, the Labour Market System (LMS), exacerbated delays experienced by unemployed people”. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/18/...
The Guardian chose a “redundant professional” angle and reported that jobcentres were “largely unprepared to deal with the influx of professionals looking for work”. They reported that people looking for jobs were “met with delays caused by understaffed offices, insufficiently trained advisers and crashed computer systems.” www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/feb/17/recess...
The Conservatives not surprisingly put a thoroughly negative spin on the findings. They said that Job Centre staff “were forced to take on more back-to-work schemes than they could deal with”. They were underprepared and ill-equipped to deal with putting the new programmes into action. The slew of government initiatives which followed the start of the recession were underfunded and there were administrative and computer problems associated with managing the new programmes. Here’s how the BBC covered the story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8...
Just for the record, the 196 page report that these alarming conclusions were drawn from has the characteristically soporific title “Jobseekers Regime and Flexible New Deal, the Six Month Offer and Support for the Newly Unemployed evaluations: an early process study”. It is a preliminary evaluation of the revised JSA regime and new programme offers which went live in Aporil 2009.
Decide for yourself. You may struggle to find much in the report which actually stands-up the conclusions reached in the headlines. The link to the report summary is here http://research.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd5/summ... and the full report is here - http://research.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd5/rpor...
Comments
A good recession.
Something I sent to a provider in July: (slightly edited to remove identification)
The last recession did not have Jobcentre Plus behaving as it does now - the Unemployment Benefit regime was much less active and people just had to sign on to say they had not been working. They were beginning to be asked what they had done to look for work but in the enormous barns of UB offices the main effort was on getting people through and benefit paid i.e. minimal jobsearch monitoring.
In cricketing terms the "three times the volume first thought of" relates to a typical England batting collapse where administration is basically overwhelmed.
In January-February 2009 that scenario was a real possibility. It happened in Ireland more or less where benefit payments schedules got longer.
However, Jobcentre Plus weathered Jan-Feb, including meeting their targets. That's weathering a full pace attack with a new ball. Jobcentre Plus, DWP and the Civil Service as a whole are very proud of their performance.
That performance included keeping the numbers and schedule for new jobseeker and advisory interviews going - although the length of interviews suffered (as the number and schedule is measured).
Since then Jobcentre Plus has taken advantage of a natural breather (seasonal reduction in new claims) to 'move onto the front foot' and target the 'day 1 support' and the three-month flow rates - which is to me at least showing effect - the red dots are no longer shooting up my charts but in some cases down - and these are seasonally adjusted figures.
Subject to the usual caveats, I don't see Jobcentre Plus being overwhelmed any time soon - if they can handle the Feb 2009 inflow which was around the highest on record, while keeping the JSA regime going, then they've got arrangements in place to handle most things.
Of course, we've taken the new ball in Jan/Feb 2010 and have had a further pace attack, but I haven't heard rumours of much going wrong over the last few weeks, have you?
I might add, that those of the 100,000 a week who started in Jan-March 2009 who have not got jobs (or left to anywhere else) will have been arriving at FND providers over the last few weeks, so it should have been busy, but will ease off with the seasonal reduction in new claims around last April.
Does this reflect on the ground experience?
Leith (Edinburgh) Jobcentre, and I suspect many others, are still failing to explain to claimants what FND is when they refer them to the program. And my Personal Adviser thought A4e was the only provider in Edinburgh. I had to explain to her that there we're two (the other being Ingeus). She informed me that I would be going to A4e on FND, "no I'm not" I replied. I then made a formal complaint to the jobcentre asking what is the point in having two providers if claimants don't get a choice? The reply I got was that claimants are allocated to a provider, you don't get a choice, that's the way it is. Anyway, I started at Ingeus last week and not A4e, as I feared. And although it's early days, Ingeus are far better than A4e - I did the 13-week New Deal torture course with them so I speak from experience. Although New Deal and Flexible New Deal are different programs I would advise anyone faced with the prospect of going on any job program to avoid A4e.
It would be useful to know the numbers reaching the 12 month FND point - I've heard rumour that this is lower than expected but not seen any stats yet. Do you have any Paul?
Also heard a statistic last week from a JCP Regional Manager that more people left JSA to start work in Dec 2009 than in any other month in the last 15 years. I was stunned.
Whether the numbers reaching the 12 month FND point are above or below expectation depends on how clued up the provider has been on adjusting expectations (and whether they've asked the right questions).
My forecasts have been falling slightly over the last few months but the Jan figure was a little bit above my expectations, but within the range I use. This may well be due to the date they do the count being later this year.
The Dec 2009 leaving JSA to start work figure being high will depend on your region and how you calculate December - calendar month or stat month. November in the stat series was very high, the 7th highest since the series started in 1998. January 2010 was the second highest January (1999 being higher).
What you've got to remember is that there are more people able to leave JSA to start work, so it's the percentage of job outcomes that counts.
American's should be happy to hear this news even if it's not from our nation. There isn't any more Ireland recession. They were formally brought away from recession status when their domestic product growth increased by 2.7%. This is good news because at the worst part of their recession, unemployment was as high as 13%. If Ireland pulled out of the recession, America should be able to. So this in essence is actually good news for everyone.