Guido Fawkes5.4 Million Unemployed, 17.3% or 1 in 6
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July 15, 2009
http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2009/07/how-many-are-unemployed.html
HOW MANY ARE UNEMPLOYED?
Today’s figures (pdf) show that there are 2.38 million unemployed. This, though, is only part of the story. The figures also show that there are 927,000 part-time workers who’d like a full-time job (table 3) and 2.1 million economically inactive people (students, the ill, discouraged workers, home-makers, table 12) who’d like a job.
If we add these together, there are 5.4 million frustrated workers - those who’d like to work more than they are actually doing. This is equivalent to 17.3% - more than one-in-six - of the labour force*.
What’s striking here is that this measure has always been high. Even at the height of the boom, there were almost 4 million frustrated workers - equivalent to 13.5% of the workforce.
This suggests that Marxists are correct. Capitalism, at least in its actually existing form, is incapable of providing full employment.
In this context, Don Paskini is surely right. Trying to cajole the long-term sick into work by cutting their benefits is fatuous, as there’s little work to be had. Such a policy is much like Edward III’s Statute of Labourers - an act of class warfare lacking any decent economic logic.
Our biggest economic problem is a lack of jobs for those who want them, not the fact that some people don’t want to work.
* I say “equivalent” because the economically inactive are not counted as part of the workforce.
If we add these together, there are 5.4 million frustrated workers - those who’d like to work more than they are actually doing. This is equivalent to 17.3% - more than one-in-six - of the labour force*.
What’s striking here is that this measure has always been high. Even at the height of the boom, there were almost 4 million frustrated workers - equivalent to 13.5% of the workforce.
This suggests that Marxists are correct. Capitalism, at least in its actually existing form, is incapable of providing full employment.
In this context, Don Paskini is surely right. Trying to cajole the long-term sick into work by cutting their benefits is fatuous, as there’s little work to be had. Such a policy is much like Edward III’s Statute of Labourers - an act of class warfare lacking any decent economic logic.
Our biggest economic problem is a lack of jobs for those who want them, not the fact that some people don’t want to work.
* I say “equivalent” because the economically inactive are not counted as part of the workforce.
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