Our son has had a good summer. Back from university, he’s been flat out working as a waiter and behind the bar. His employer is an agency that supplies staff to events. It suits him down to the ground; some days he has a shift, others he doesn’t. He’s making good money. It’s the gig economy, and he’s on a zero-hours contract.
Except he’s not only been doing parties and weddings. He’s also been filling in at restaurants. Slots that might once have been taken by a staffer are now not. He is doing very well out of businesses that are not hiring permanent workers.
His experience is being repeated everywhere – more and more people are being taken on temporarily. He is a student, and has Rachel Reeves’ hiking of employers’ national insurance and the national living wage to thank for his good fortune. Others are not so lucky. They want proper jobs with career paths, and they cannot get them. They have next to no chance of renting, let alone saving to buy a home, and are stuck.
Conditions are worsening, not improving. Research from the Resolution Foundation suggests unemployment will hit 5 per cent for the three months to August, up from 4.7 per cent in the second quarter. “Unemployment has not yet peaked,” said Gregory Thwaites, research director at the think tank. “The ongoing loosening of the labour market appears to be taking the form of a hiring freeze rather than a firing spree, but this is still bad news for jobseekers as vacancies look set to continue being scarce.”
They based their study on a range of indicators, looking at vacancies, wages, company surveys, and jobless benefit claims. The official ONS data says otherwise, that employment is up over the past year. The Resolution Foundation analysis says no, pointing to a level below where it was on the eve of the pandemic.
To complicate matters, pay has been rising. Presumably, what that really means is that if you’re blessed to be in work, your earnings are up, keeping in line with inflation and the rising cost of living, and possibly, having to go that bit further to cover for those who are not being permanently hired.
Which is to be believed, ONS or Resolution? The former gives Reeves and Sir Keir Starmer reasons for boosterism, for insisting their “further and faster” approach is having an effect. The latter, plus anecdotal evidence such as our son’s, is telling a different story. As Thwaites describes: “It worryingly indicates that economic inactivity has been on an upward trajectory.”
Has been and is. Starmer promised in his election campaign to “Get Britain working”. Yet, the new Department of Work and Pensions tally for those receiving some form of worklessness welfare – incapacity benefit, unemployment support and Universal Credit – stands at 6.5 million, a rise of 500,000 since Labour took office. It is well ahead of the previous peak of 5.9 million reached during the pandemic.
The government maintains that this is misleading, that what it highlights is a welfare system that is not fit-for-purpose and needs reforming. There may be some truth in that, but it ignores the bigger picture, which is increasingly bleak.
More signs: The latest statistics for NEETs – those 16- to 24-year-olds not in education, employment or training – continue to push upwards to just short of one million. The general secretary of the TUC, Paul Nowak, blames the “Tory legacy” of low pay and deregulation. He wishes to see additional state support in “a comprehensive plan to ensure all young people across the country can access high-quality training and decent, well-paid work as well as timely and effective healthcare”.
Where is his “decent, well-paid work” if the response from employers to higher national insurance contributions and the increased living wage is not to employ at all?
The housing market is almost lifeless; in flats, it is virtually non-existent. Britain has stopped moving.
This week, the cost of UK public borrowing also climbed to an almost 27-year high, forcing up the cost of servicing government debt to more than £100bn a year, or almost 10 per cent of the annual budget.
Repeatedly, the talk is that Reeves may soon have to go cap-in-hand to the IMF for a bailout. While that seems fanciful at this stage and is confined to her opponents rubbing salt in, the direction the economy is heading is troubling.
Whatever Reeves and Starmer set out to do simply isn’t happening. Contrary to what they pledged, their policies – and Britain – are not working.
