Skip to main content

55% of the 3.5 million jobs created in the last 20 years were part time posts.

We in the UK have added 3.5 million jobs to our economy in the last 20 years. In total, we've added 1.9 million part time positions, and 1.6 million full time jobs. This means that 55% of the jobs created in the last 20 years were actually part time posts. Since 1979, we have added less than 4 million jobs to the UK economy but we have no way of knowing the status (FT/PT) of the jobs created between 1979 and 1992 because we did not record the hours. Crucially, even if every single job created between 1979-1992 was a full time position (unlikely I know) then it would make no difference to the fact that the majority of the jobs created under neo-liberalism (1979-present) were actually part time positions. Do not take my word for any of this. Go and peek at the Office of National Statistics where you can explore the data for yourselves (Zip file here).

The reasons for this are very clear. Emphasis on a service sector and particular almost slavish loyalty to the financial sector has created a society where labour intensive work is deemed unprofitable. The costs of employing humans is deemed as ideally avoidable. It is why we have begun typing NHS patients letters in India. It is why we will soon be outsourcing our old NHS Direct jobs to India. Why pay UK citizens when Indians will do it for cheaper? In the fields of manufacturing and energy supply we shut down or privatised our old staple industries such as coal and steel that employed millions. Today clean coal makes it possible to open back up many of these pits but we shirk that choice. We have even outsourced our gas boiler production to Turkey despite the fact that 20 million UK households depend on gas boilers. We could change all of this in the morning if we got back to labour intensive work such as house building, green energy, clean coal/CCS and much more. 


A good piece on the importance of job creation as an issue on the doorstep comes from North East Labour MP, Roberta Blackman-Woods (here).

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

clip on magnetic sunglasses visit here

Save with prescription glasses and sunglasses. Prescription eyeglasses with magnetic clip on sunglasses. A wide selection of colors and styles for every budget! -GlassesPoint. Prescription eyeglasses with magnetic clip on sunglasses. A wide selection of colors and styles for every budget! Free magnetic clip on with every pair of glasses.  The operator should contact lens Plano glasses a few days of Sun and Rx on the other person. Many people choose single vision lenses, designed for a specific use, such as prescription sunglasses. Clip-ons magnetic magnetic clip ons often come with their prescription glasses frames. Prescription glasses Goggles4u dollars from 29.99 with free shipping. Takumi neodium magnet glass features recipes that are light, strong and in. The combination of some normal prescription glasses and a pair of polarized glasses that glare-resistant to outdoor activities. clip on magnetic sunglasses visit here
Post a Comment
Read more

The Tragedy of Underfunded Mental Health Care

Today’s Managing Health Care Costs Indicator is   19,900 The NY Times  on Friday had a deeply disturbing article on a murder that stunned the mental health community here in Massachusetts.    A long-term schizophrenic man, off his medicine and spiraling into incoherence, killed a young female counselor who was the sole worker at a group home in a Boston suburb.   His mother, who works at a Boston teaching hospital, was frantic with worry as her adult son, who had been arrested for assault multiple times, was becoming more psychotic.    It was hard for her to get anyone’s attention. The counselor was the first in her family to get a college degree, and had just decided to go to nursing school.    Now she’s dead – and her family had trouble scraping together the resources for a burial.   The schizophrenic will be imprisoned for the rest of his life – which ironically could be the best chance for him to get appropriate medical care. Both...
Post a Comment
Read more

The big 6 energy companies made profits of £4,335,000,000 last year.

Figures just released by the Office of National Statistics claim that the number of households living in fuel poverty has declined by 0.7million ( see data here ). The government say that less than 5 million households live in fuel poverty, while Uswitch claim that 6.3 million households live in fuel poverty. Uswitch's figure is much more reliable as their's summer 2011 price hikes. We say a family is in fuel poverty when it spends 10% of household income on its dual energy costs of heating the home and operating cooking and electrical appliances. However, as USwitch explain the governments figures are appallingly out of state ( here ). The publication today by the government only examines fuel costs up to the end of 2010. The Office of National Statistics does admit that if it factored in housing costs then 3 million more households could be described as living in fuel poverty, it also admits that 72% of English households faced a high risk of fuel poverty at year end (2010)....
Post a Comment
Read more