Official jobless figures reach 13-year high

The number of people depending on Jobseeker’s Allowance reached the highest level last month since new Labour took office, official figures showed on Wednesday.

The claimant count shot up by 23,500 to hit 1.64 million, the highest figure since April 1997.

Figures for the long-term unemployed, defined as people out of work for over a year, also reached a new high under the incumbent government.

It increased by 37,000 to 663,000 in the final quarter of 2009.

While the number of job vacancies rose by 49,000 in the three months to January, the figure of 479,000 job vacancies was still down 24 per cent on the previous year.

And Left Economics Advisory Panel spokesman Andrew Fisher warned that these figures may have been boosted by a rise in insecure temporary contracts and part-time vacancies.

He stressed that “for millions of people, the misery of recession is still being felt – acutely.”

The claimant count rise followed a recent admission by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) that jobcentres were “largely unprepared” to help the thousands of people finding themselves out of work.

In a report commenting on the findings of research into jobcentres across Britain, the DWP said: “All the observed offices were perceived to be understaffed, strained further by high staff turnover, and recruitment was ongoing.”

A Public and Commercial Services Union spokesman said that new Labour’s policy of slashing jobcentre positions prior to the recession had put its members under a “tremendous amount of pressure to deliver the best service possible.”

And he added that those cuts had “left an incapacity in the system to deal with helping people to get into work.”

Taken from Morning Star

Also see the BBC News report

More public sector cuts to come

Lord Mandelson has declared that much of the rest of the public sector will face similar funding cuts to higher education in the upcoming year.

Universities learned last week that their budgets were to be slashed by £449 million for 2010-11, with further cuts due to be implemented in the future.

In a speech at the first Lord Dearing Memorial Conference at Nottingham University yesterday, the Business Secretary said: “Much of the rest of the public sector will receive similar constraints in the course of this year or soon after.

“Public funding cuts are the regrettable cost to the UK of saving the banking sector and getting the country through the recession.”

Lord Mandelson dismissed warnings from Britain’s top university leaders that the higher education system could be “brought to its knees” by government spending cuts which could eventually run into billions.

As university applications hit record levels this year, the Russell Group has warned that students face a desperate scramble for places and tens of thousands could miss out.

Yesterday, Lord Mandelson casually suggested that students who miss out on university places due to the massive cuts should seek “alternatives” to full-time study at a time when youth unemployment is at a record high and skills training is scarce.

University and College Union general secretary Sally Hunt condemned the Business Secretary’s “failure to grasp the severity of his planned cuts. Lord Mandelson would be better off listening to the academy’s concerns rather than rudely dismissing them.”

The union has warned that the cuts would put 15,000 higher education jobs at risk.

Taken from Morning Star

Future still looks grim for jobless

Official figures claiming Britain is out of its record-long recession provide “scant comfort” for the millions still unemployed, trade unions and left economists said on Tuesday.

A moderate 0.1 per cent expansion in the economy between October and December ended six straight quarters of shrinking output, according to first estimates from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

The growth is weaker than the 0.4 per cent predicted by economists, which sparked fears that Britain is still on track for a “double-dip” recession.

Overall, the economy slumped 4.8 per cent last year – the biggest annual contraction since records began in 1949 – and it has lost 6 per cent since the recession began in 2008.

The government boasted that Tuesday’s figures were a testament that its economic measures to remedy the crisis were working.

A Treasury spokesman said that ministers would continue to “support the economy” – a policy which has seen billions of pounds of public money thrown at the banks, resulting in an estimated £178 billion national deficit.

Unemployment stands at 2.5 million and, according to the Charted Institute of Personnel Development, two-thirds of those who managed to find work after being made redundant were forced to take a 28 per cent pay cut.

Left economists have argued that investment in public services and the manufacturing industry coupled with a crackdown on wealthy tax dodgers and executive bonuses are the most sustainable ways of stabilising the economy.

Left Economics Advisory Panel chairman John McDonnell MP warned on Tuesday: “Harsh public spending cuts and job losses would risk sending the UK into a prolonged recession.”

TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: “With the threat of a double-dip recession looming large, it would be madness to cut public spending now.

“Unemployment will increase again, with more people continuing to face long spells out of work. No sectors of the economy are fully recovered and areas such as construction are still really struggling.”

Mr Barber’s Scottish counterpart Grahame Smith expressed fears that Scotland may remain in recession for a further quarter as unemployment has soared to 200,000.

He said that the ONS figures provided “scant comfort for the millions struggling to find work. In this context, immediate and severe cuts in public spending will almost certainly plunge the economy straight back into recession.”

Taken from Morning Star

‘We’re losing child poverty battle,’ charity warns

The fight against child poverty has “slid into reverse” with more than 1.7 million British youngsters missing out on enough food and clothes, Save the Children has warned.

Evidence from the charity showed that England has been worst hit by the increase in severe child poverty, with more than 1.5m children now living in families earning 50 per cent below the average income.

“Measuring severe child poverty in the UK reveals that 13 per cent of the UK’s children are now living in severe poverty and shows that efforts to reduce child poverty have not only stalled but have slid into reverse,” a Save the Children spokesman said.

Evidence showed a sharp increase in severe poverty even before the recession, with an additional 260,000 children plunged into severe poverty during four years of economic boom before the recession hit in 2008.

The report also showed that Pakistani, Bangladeshi and black African children were around three times more likely to be in severe poverty than their white counterparts.

Taken from Morning Star

Million workers pay price of City failure

More than a million workers have lost their jobs since the beginning of the recession, forcing many to take a huge pay cut in order to land a new job, economists have revealed.

A report released by the Charted Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD) paints a devastating picture for working people who are continuing to suffer job losses, pay cuts and huge drops in living standards during the recession.

It revealed that 1.3 million people have been made redundant during the “official” recession – double the fall in employment and equivalent to 4.4 per cent of those in work before the downturn.

And two-thirds of those who succeeded in finding new work were forced to take a 28 per cent pay cut.

Between April 2008 and November 2009 there were 6.2 million fresh claims for jobseeker’s allowance – an astonishing 7.5 times higher than the official unemployment claimant count, according to the CIPD.

Communist Party of Britain general secretary Rob Griffiths said the government had “utterly failed to protect workers,” preferring to allow them to be “thrown to the wolves” of unemployment and poverty.

Mr Griffiths insisted that, if the government wanted to successfully ease the pain of the recession for workers, it must “direct the activities of big business and the movement of capital.

“As in every capitalist recession, many viable enterprises have been shut down in order to maximise profitability,” he said.

“Many employers have taken advantage of the recession to intensify or to force fewer workers to work even harder.”

The CIPD study is released on Monday, the day that Chancellor Alistair Darling’s promise of employment, training or work experience for every young person out of work for six months goes live.

In his pre-Budget report, Mr Darling called for a 1 per cent pay cap for the public sector.

But speaking to the Sunday Times, he threatened to bring a swooping axe down on all public-sector workers, promising pay cuts.

Mr Darling tried to justify the decision, quoting figures that private-sector workers had suffered an average 0.1 per cent pay cut across the board.

Responding to the Chancellor, a public-sector union Unison spokeswoman accused him of using the recession to divide working people.

“What is the point in pitting public-sector workers against private-sector workers in a race to the bottom?” she questioned.

“They are using the public sector as a smokescreen when it is big City bankers who have dragged this country into recession.”

The spokeswoman also said that the union expected the government to honour the three-year pay deal in the NHS and called for a strong focus on getting the country out of recession.

“We need to look how we get this country out of recession and that is not by depressing wages and the economy still further.

“When you cut people’s wages you cut their purchasing power – this has a knock-on effect.”

Taken from Morning Star

Unemployment down, Employment down

A complex picture on unemployment was unveiled in the statistics released today for September to November 2009. Total unemployment on the LFS measure dropped slightly by 7,000.

The claimant count of unemployment (those actually claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance) fell by 15,200 – which suggests the increasingly stringent conditionality and compulsion is taking its toll on jobseekers.

However, the number of people in work fell by 14,000 in the quarter (to 28.9 million), so where have all these people gone? If 14,000 fewer people are in work and 7,000 fewer are out of work then that’s 21,000 missing people . . . surely?

The answer lies in the number of people classed as ‘economically inactive’, which includes people who have taken early retirement or have given up looking for work. This increased by 79,000 in the quarter to reach a record high of 8.05 million, 21% of the working age population.

But behind the unemployment figures, another picture is emerging – those on involuntary short-time working (i.e. those who have cut their hours to stay in work). Today’s figures revealed a fall of 113,000 in the number of people in full-time jobs, to 21.21 million, compared with a 99,000 increase in part-time workers to 7.71 million.

Falling employment and increasing short-time working means less disposable income which is bound to filter through into tighter consumer spending. Likewise, average pay increased by 0.7% in the year to November 2009, while inflation hit 2.9% in December – further hitting the value of wages in people’s pockets.

People falling out of claimant eligibility into the grey or black economy also means tax revenues are hit.

The true picture revealed today is not one of an economy that has ‘turned the corner’ or is ‘on the up’, but of an economy that is incredibly fragile.

Taken from Left Economics Advisory Panel

TUC warns against failing unemployed

The TUC has urged the government not to repeat past mistakes of the recession and create a universal job guarantee for the long-term unemployed.

TUC general secretary Brendan Barber made the call following concerns about the mental health and future job prospects of people out of work for more than 12 months.

“A job paying decent wages for at least six months provides the kind of experience employers want and gives an unemployed person the best possible chance of getting back to work,” Mr Barber said.

In a letter to Work and Pensions Secretary Yvette Cooper, the TUC, along with think tank Demos, the Work Foundation and James Purnell, have called for a job guarantee for anyone who has been on jobseeker’s allowance for more than 12 months.

New figures out tomorrow are expected to show an increase in unemployment.

Despite official figures showing that Britain could come out of recession soon, trade unionists are concerned that the unemployed will be neglected.

Long-term unemployment can lead to the likelihood of mental health problems, relationship breakdown and issues relating to alcohol, debt and homelessness, the TUC argued.

In previous recessions during the 1990s, unemployment continued to rise for 18 months after the crisis had officially ended.

Mr Barber said: “While recent economic indicators offer reasons for cautious cheer, unemployment remains a huge concern.

“There must not be a repeat of the last two recessions, when millions of people were stuck in semi-permanent unemployment long after the economy had recovered.

“Long periods out of work can have a devastating impact on people’s health, while mass unemployment can crush communities. A universal job guarantee would help prevent this.”

But RMT general secretary Bob Crow said that, despite assurances from commentators about heading out of recession, “for hundreds of thousands of people the misery of long-term unemployment is a daily reality.

“What we need is a government programme of job creation, funded by the nationalised banks, targeted at house building, infrastructure projects and investing in public services,” said Mr Crow.

“That radical approach would make a real and lasting difference and is at the heart of the campaign around the People’s Charter.”

Taken from Morning Star

Shelter warns of growing credit card problems

A million families have resorted to using credit cards to pay their mortgage or rent during the past year, Shelter has revealed.

The housing charity said that around 6 per cent of households had used their plastic in order to keep up with housing costs over the past 12 months.

Working-class people were most likely to have resorted to using debt to cover their mortgage or rent, but a fair number of higher earners also admitted that they had been forced to use their credit card in this way.

Shelter director of policy and campaigns Kay Boycott said: “It is a shocking discovery that over a million households in Britain are in such desperate circumstances that they need to borrow money on credit cards to pay for the basics.

“If people are struggling to the extent that they fear losing their home, increasing credit card debt can’t be the answer.”

The group warned that people who had used their credit card to cover their housing costs could find themselves homeless, particularly as defaulting on their credit card repayments could lead to their property being repossessed.

Taken from Morning Star

Credit crunched pensioners turn to crime

Nearly 80 pensioners have been arrested in Sunderland and East Durham for shoplifting in the last two years.

In total 300 have been nicked on various charges and charity workers suggest the recession is driving them to crime.

Age Concern spokesman Les Young said: “The basic state pension of £92 a week is too low for people to live on.

“Basic foodstuffs, utility bills, transport and other daily costs have risen with no proper increase in benefits for those who need them most.

“We are starting to see older people shoplifting to get by.”

However, Alan Patchett, director of Age Concern Sunderland, said the number arrested for shoplifting was a very small minority of Wearside’s elderly population.

He added: “My message would be that if people are that desperate, come and talk to us.

“We can offer help with benefits, keeping homes warm, and have all sorts of support mechanisms.”

New figures have revealed that seven octogenarians were among those who had their collars felt in Sunderland, with the oldest being an 86-year-old suspected of shoplifting.

Taken from Sunderland Echo

Lifeline youth club under threat

A youth club that has played a key role in transforming an estate once dubbed the “car crime capital of Europe” is in danger of folding.

Every week for the past six years, Pennywell Youth Project has packed more than 600 children into its Petersfield Road base, getting them off street corners and into activities such as music and DJ workshops, football and out-of-school clubs.

But the club is fast becoming the latest victim of the recession. Grants are drying up, staff are working on a voulntary basis and the lights are being turned off to save funds.

“Jobs have been lost and more could go,” said project manager Gordon Langley. “We could last six months, three months, two months – I just don’t know.”

Taken from Sunderland Echo