- Apr 19, 2018
- 2,178
That's not really true though is it?
6% of those "employed" in the UK are on zero hour contracts - this means they have no guarantee of work but still count as "employed" for statistical purposes. Think about it: you're employed according to the government even if you only work 2 hours a month because then you don't meet the Government definition of "someone not in work" but are you really employed working just 24 hours a year or are they taking the mickey in the hope that people quote the unemployment figures without actually checking how they are calculated?
As with a lot of figures the unemployment figures are a massive fudge and pretty meaningless. The government twists the criteria to look good. It's not just a Tory thing, every government does it.
The reality - and the more meaningful figures than employment - is that since the referendum in-work poverty has increased, in-work benefits claims have increased, and child poverty has increased precisely because of this. When you talk about 450,000 more jobs being created you're counting an INCREDIBLE number of jobs where a single full time job has been lost and maybe 12 part time and zero hour job-share roles created in it's place. That's not making new jobs, it's subdividing old ones. 2 years ago there were half as many zero hour contracts as there are now (just under a million then - approx 1 in 35 of all jobs, now it's 1 in 18).
It's how companies basically use government welfare payments to subsidise paying lower wages. Scrap having to pay a pension and benefits and instead recruit a load of agency staff on a zero hour contract and leave you as the tax payer to pick up the bill in benefits for low income. The funny thing is people then claim the government has reduced unemployment and are doing a good job.
Have a look at the ONS, FullFact, JRF, CIPD and a host of other politically neutral, independently funded organisations and they lay it all out for you with tables and graphs and numbers that are incontrovertible: employment numbers only look good because people who don't work more than a few hours a month but have contracts are counted as employed. The consequence is a huge increase in poverty over the past 8 years but particularly the past 2, and a massive rise in employment insecurity.
Have a think too about how if unemployment is really so low in a meaningful way (not a fudged number way), why is the government spending on benefits up billions on previous years even with the most punitive, strict and difficult benefits system we've ever had in operation? One that's has demonstrably led to many deaths (government's own reports put it at 81,000 before even the botched Universal Credit roll-out). That's spend doesn't include anything like pensions or NHS either.
Those are facts, not claims, but verifiable facts from multiple independent sources. Worth looking at in your role as "bringer of truth" maybe. That might really hurt though?
For what it's worth Corbyn is just as bad as the Tories - anyone who claims there's a "job's first Brexit" literally doesn't have a clue what they are talking about and is incapable of acknowledging reality and evidence.
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