Before we redesigned this website, we had a reader's poll on the home screen asking what people thought was the reason unemployment. The responses showed a pretty even split between those who thought there were not enough jobs and those who thought lack of skills was the answer.
This is actually quite a slippery topic. There can be no doubt that labour markets are dependent on macro-economic factors. At times of national crisis, for example the first and second World Wars, when every pair of hands was needed, unemployment was not only effectively wiped out, but whole swathes of new workers entered the labour market, especially women. In the long period of economic growth in the 50s and 60s, the demands of the market brought groups of relatively unskilled labour into white collar office jobs. If you have ever seen the film Quadrophenia, you can see this as a depiction of young working class men coming to terms with this economic reality (by becoming Mods,as it happens). Of course this era saw the active encouragement of migration from the British Commonwealth to fill skills shortages, such as those in the NHS, or to supply labour for jobs that were otherwise hard to fill.
Since the late 70s however, we have generally high levels of unemployment, especially at the moment. But it is not enough to say that there are not enough jobs to go round. Clearly most people are in work, and the reasons why some aren't is open to debate. Is it geography (living in areas with few jobs), lack of skills or poor motivation? Could everybody get a job if they tried hard enough? Have we created workless ghettos where the norm is not to work?
To answer this needs a further look at the labour market. Even at times of full employment there will always be some people looking for work. This is called friction and is where people are shifting from job to job, for whatever reason. So there will always be some vacancies. Capturing vacancy information is not simple. Many jobs are never advertised, and many employers do not use Job Centreplus to fill their vacancies. Against this, many JCP vacancies are multiple ones, or get withdrawn before they are filled. There are seasonal. temporary and part time issues to consider. A genuine issue, especially in London, is that work does not always appear to pay for people in low paid posiions. You may say people should work anyway, but you have to accept the economic rationale of why some jobseekers would question this.
John Harris in The Guardian is worried that back to work programmes are pushing positive psychology approaches to motivation that essentially get jobseekers to blame themselves for not working hard enough to get a job, or perhaps putting additional barriers in their way. From a pragmatic point of view, being positive and perstistent is a good approach to getting work, but this should not be at the expense of losing touch with the realities. Employment practitioners will know that getting jobseekers to be realistic in their jobsearch is half the battle. A worry is that internalising blame for being unemployed can be counter productive if jobsearch does not come off quickly, and could add to depression and anxiety. A balanced approach requires honesty over prospects, where possible supplemented with providing bridges to work through skills development, placements and coaching.
On this point, It is said that generals always fight the current war like it was the last one, and I wonder if the new Work Programme is in this position, with a much weaker labour market now than when the programme was designed. The first set of outcomes are due in the next month, which may give us an idea of what is happening out there, and what needs to change if it is to achieve its objectives.
Get App’ed Apprenticeship Project
funded by the National Apprenticeship Service as part of it’s Diversity Pilot Programme. The project will use innovative approaches that improve engagement, recruitment,...
