Back to the future... unemployment
Yesterday we reported that the number of people claiming Job Seeker's Allowance had broken through the 50,000 barrier in the Liverpool city region.
The figures showed the largest monthly increase in jobseekers for 18 years, when I was still a boy.
And the number on the dole is predicted to hit at least 60,000 before the recession is over.
There are some glimmers of hope locally. While this is no consolation to anyone who lost their job, the Liverpool city region is not losing jobs at the same rate the rest of the country.
In Liverpool 20,055 are now collecting Jobseeker's Allowance, in Sefton there are 7,641 claimants, in Knowsley 5,937, Halton 4,209, St Helens 5,417, and Wirral 9,265. A total of 52,524.
Liverpool has saw the lowest month on month rise in unemployment in the region, up 6% since February.
While Wirral and St Helens had the highest with 9% increases. Halton, Knowsley and Sefton saw 8% increases. All are lower than the national average of 14%, or the North West average of 11%.
But it is worth pointing out that this area has a high proportion of public sector jobs, which are not being shed at anywhere near the same rate as those in the private sector.
The Times reports today that there was a net increase of 15,000 jobs in the public sector nationally between October and December 2008, while 13,000 jobs were lost in the private sector in the same period.
Labour's Birkenhead MP Frank Field who has been a thorn in the side of Gordon Brown is on form in his latest blog post, where he states:
Our proud boast when we were elected in 1997 was that we would reform the welfare state to meet the new strains and stresses of a global economy. Now, at the feast promised by pegging into the global economy, we have an unwanted ghost wearing the ugly face of 1930s unemployment...
...instead of drawing up more measures to get the supposed work-shy into work, the government should have been radically overhauling the National Insurance-based Jobseekers' Allowance. People around the country are complaining to me of being gobsmacked when signing on for the first time and finding that not only do their decades of insurance contributions qualify them for a mere ã60.50 a week - exactly the same as if they had never gone to work in the first place - but that Jobcentre Plus skills are not honed to helping them get jobs.
Ever since Balanced Migration was established, we have campaigned for a revolution on the issuing of work permits. Approximately 150,000 skilled workers came into this country from outside the EU during the past year. Not one of these applications was tested by insisting that jobs were first advertised at Jobcentre Plus.
Whisper it, but in the last few days, the government has made a most welcome u-turn. From April 1, no work permits will be issued unless the jobs have been advertised at Jobcentre Plus for two weeks. Here is a real achievement. British jobs will first be offered to unemployed British workers.
Here is one really good piece of news showing the government doing its best to protect British workers. Why aren't the prime minister and all his colleagues singing this message from the roof tops?
Dale Street Associates
David Bartlett
City editor of the Post and Echo covering politics, regeneration, and urban affairs.
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