So a British government minister has come out and said that (Britain’s) unemployment problem is due to the laziness of the unemployed. There is no shortage of jobs, she announced, pointing to the more than 400,000 vacancies registered with UK unemployment offices.
OK, this is really so dumb that I am tempted not to bother. But the problem goes deeper. Even if other policymakers don’t say it aloud, this thinking underlies much of the policy approach (if it can be called that) to unemployment in the crisis. Last year’s European Annual Growth Survey, for instance, was fully signed up to the idea that work needs to be made ‘more attractive’ as the main way to reduce unemployment. So let’s remind ourselves of the basic facts. (I use Eurostat data which are comparable across countries; they may differ from national sources.)
Remember the heady days of 2007? Britain had ended boom and bust and all was right with the world. Unemployment was drifting down gently from 1.7 million towards 1.5 million. The number of vacancies moved up, from just over 600 to almost 700,000. This is what wonkish economists call a tightening labour market. If you want to bring in moralistic categories like laziness, then it was declining (if you look at the number of unemployed) but apparently rising (if you look at vacancies).
Or you can do a quick bit of maths and see that even by the end of the year (and the boom) there were still around two-and-a-half jobseekers for every job offer in the UK. And surely it is not too hard to understand that neither the unemployed nor the vacancies are static. It takes time to match people and jobs; the vacancy numbers have to be seen against an economy with around 27 million jobs.
The crisis hit. (There was some debate about its causes, but I don’t remember anyone seriously blaming the unemployed for the outbreak of the crisis; perhaps, though, I don’t surf Tory blogs enough.) Within the space of a year unemployment rose by one million. At exactly the same time, vacancies fell, by more than 250,000. The ratio of unemployed to vacancies approximately doubled.
UK unemployment and vacancies, thous.
Since then both series have more or less flatlined; since mid-2011 unemployment has risen further. This reflected the flat-lining of the economy as austerity measures increasingly dampened demand. Quite what laziness story the minister, or anyone else, thinks fits these data, I do not know.
It gets even better if – and I realise this is a big ask for British Conservatives – you raise your gaze to Europe or indeed across the Atlantic.
In the US, laziness unemployment doubled at the same time as British unemployment was rapidly increasing. In Europe the rise was from 17 to 23 million, in round numbers. I do not have comparable vacancy data to hand, but want to bet that they declined? Even more striking, in non-UK Europe, which followed Britain into the folly of austerity, unemployment has also been rising again since early 2011. In the US, which did not, unemployment has been falling and, more recently, employment expanding strongly. (Until then the decline in US unemployment reflected to a considerable extent withdrawals from the labour force.)
If patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel (Samuel Johnson, 1775) then blaming unemployment on the laziness of the unemployed is the last refuge of a failed policymaker (Andrew Watt, 2012).
Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, but you get my drift.
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Agreed. What sentient being would prefer to be out of work at a time like this – it all depends how the rewards add up, and already poor people should never be forced to work for less than they already have. We're quoted 400,000 available jobs, well, over 25,000 of them are here:
http://www.jobsmanifesto.com
(disclosure: I know the developer). No agencies, just direct links to jobs, all over the UK (but a bit patchy in some predictable areas like Cornwall, the North East and so on).
And of course, this is only "official" unemployment data. It doesn't include the millions who are economically inactive, but would work if given the opportunity, such as those on other benefits, with working partners, etc. The Labour Force Survey puts the total "wanting work" at around 5 million at present, and gives a "people per vacancy" stat of around 10-1. The ratio was "best" around autumn 2004, when it levelled out at around 5.5 per vacancy.
And these are national totals, so in some areas, the ratio per vacancy will be much worse, and some demographic groups, e.g. over 55s, disabled etc, are less likely to be able to secure jobs in a private sector market, even if the vacancies exist.