Unemployment up to 7.9%

glasfryn said:

maybe to deflect from a certain funeral we should be discussing the unemployment situation
the way I see it 7.9 million will not go into 0.5 million no matter how much David,George(Gideon or what ever his name is) says it will , but then mind you Mathematics has never been their strong point has it.
it would be very interesting how many of those half million jobs are what I call real jobs, full time not call centres, or short contract.

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glasfryn said:

maybe to deflect from a certain funeral we should be discussing the unemployment situation
the way I see it 7.9 million will not go into 0.5 million no matter how much David,George(Gideon or what ever his name is) says it will , but then mind you Mathematics has never been their strong point has it.
it would be very interesting how many of those half million jobs are what I call real jobs, full time not call centres, or short contract.

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Papa Lazarou said:

Did you type that in a hurry?

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glasfryn said:

why do you ask?

ooops yes I did

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sten_super said:

What do you want to talk about?

The quarterly figures are a bit grim, but the year-on-year stats are more encouraging. Working age population was up 0.1%, employment was up 1.7%, unemployment was down 2.7% and inactivity was down 3.1%.

It's not much fun being young in this job market; unemployment was 37.9% amongst 16-17 year olds and 19% amongst 18-24 year olds, although both have declined over the previous twelve months (by 9.7% and 3.1% respectively).

All types of employment are up over the 12 months, and all by more than the rate of increase in population aged 16+. Full time employment was up 1.9%.

There's evidence of something of a rebalancing between the public and private sectors; public sector employment fell by 313,000 over the year (-5.2%) while private sector employment rose by 904,000 (+3.9%). Depressingly, the most severe job cuts in the public sector were in education and health & social work, although public administration and civil service saw employment decrease by 20,000 apiece. There's little evidence of (positive) sectoral rebalancing though; manufacturing employment picked up over the year, although at a slower rate than most parts of private sector services.

I could carry on but I suspect that no-one's really interested...

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sten_super said:

What do you want to talk about?

The quarterly figures are a bit grim, but the year-on-year stats are more encouraging. Working age population was up 0.1%, employment was up 1.7%, unemployment was down 2.7% and inactivity was down 3.1%.

It's not much fun being young in this job market; unemployment was 37.9% amongst 16-17 year olds and 19% amongst 18-24 year olds, although both have declined over the previous twelve months (by 9.7% and 3.1% respectively).

All types of employment are up over the 12 months, and all by more than the rate of increase in population aged 16+. Full time employment was up 1.9%.

There's evidence of something of a rebalancing between the public and private sectors; public sector employment fell by 313,000 over the year (-5.2%) while private sector employment rose by 904,000 (+3.9%). Depressingly, the most severe job cuts in the public sector were in education and health & social work, although public administration and civil service saw employment decrease by 20,000 apiece. There's little evidence of (positive) sectoral rebalancing though; manufacturing employment picked up over the year, although at a slower rate than most parts of private sector services.

I could carry on but I suspect that no-one's really interested...

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glasfryn said:

the thing that gets me is the way the government keep harping on about those they have just hit with crippling drops in benefit payments and have said on many occasions that if they do not like the way things are they could find employment my question is where?
as I said before 2.4 does not go into 0.5 and things look like getting considerably worse when the doors open to the Bulgarians and the Romanians as they will take up the lower paid jobs and mop up anything in between.

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Herr Tubthumper said:

There was a good article doing the rounds a few days ago by James Dyson critising the government's approach to education, and the lack of British engineers.

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Herr Tubthumper said:

There was a good article doing the rounds a few days ago by James Dyson critising the government's approach to education, and the lack of British engineers.

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bashlsdir said:

He is right. We don't have enough manufacturing jobs. We have got to stop relying on places like China for simple little things. There is absolutely no difference between a CNC machine, Moulding machine here and machines in China, so why are we not manufacturing. Why can't these governments start investing in it. If we had proper manufacturing jobs that required proper skills in machining, CNC programming, we could be training our young people up and would not require the services of people from these other countries who in my opinion have driven wages down and do not have the required skills in Engineering, because it is trade at the end of the day.

The wages would go up and we would get a skill set back that has sadly almost dissapeared from this country. Sadly Mechnical Engineering is considered as a dirty job in this country. I don't think this is the case in places like Germany where Engineers are highly respected. Manufacturing also creates thousands more jobs as each company supplies different parts and services, unlike the service industry where only a few at the top make all the money.

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Herr Tubthumper said:

There was a good article doing the rounds a few days ago by James Dyson critising the government's approach to education, and the lack of British engineers.

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soistes said:

But what's the chicken and what's the egg? Is it a shortage of engineers as you suggest or is it a shortage of good engineering jobs? My daughter recently got a very good degree in mechanical engineering from a good university (her choice of career partly influenced by me drawing to her attention the continual bleating of people like Dyson about the lack of engineers in this country).
What struck me, however, was how long it then took her to find a decent job that used her engineering skills (eventually she did) -- she was, however, deluged with offers from banks, big retailers, management consultants and the like who seem to trawl the universities for people like her; other people on her course had a similar experience, and a lot have gone into well paid jobs, the vast majority not in engineering.

By the way, Dyson himself is not an engineer but a graphic designer, if I remember right, who studied at art college...

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loz said:

That sir is a top post. I have worked in engineering since 1980, I have been lucky enough to work all over europe and the USA, and as you say engineering is seen as a good job in all those countries, much better paid and respected..and for the life of me I dont know why it is so sneered at over here??

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bashlsdir said:

Worked in Engineering myself, but now out of the Trade completely. I was a trainee toolmaker when I left school. First company I worked for all the machinery was in imperial. I learned a variety of skills from the old guys here. They have probably all sadly passed away now. They had been in the trade for years. I learned a lot here, it was really helpful in my next job I took as a CNC operative / setter. Nobody has been able to pass on these skills.

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Herr Tubthumper said:

There was a good article doing the rounds a few days ago by James Dyson critising the government's approach to education, and the lack of British engineers.

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