One in 10 of all workers is "underemployed".

[Workingman]

That's 3 million doing part-time work. If full-time work was available to some of them it would make 1.5 million more unemployed. This does not include the 'massaging' of the unemployment figures by keeping millions of people in (school) education or in universities......... Yet some 'experts' and those in government think that there is work out there! What 'king planet are they on?

Another piece of news is that only 3.5% of long-term unemployed people on the Work Programme found sustainable work (defined as a job for six months or more). Who in their right mind thinks that six months work can sustain someone for a long period?

This country is in deep doo-doo and unless something is done it will blow. We need worthwhile jobs to be created. To do so would sort out so many of our society's problems. They have to be proper jobs though, but which political party will start to reverse the rot?

[cromwell]

Houston, we have a problem!

The problem being that the world economy has, for the benefit of rich corporations and rich men, become globalised. British workers lose their jobs as manufacturing goes overseas, British workers have to fight like rats in a sack for the remaining jobs against a flood of economic migrants.

Gievn that no one wants to join political parties any more, because hardly anyone agrees with their policies, our parties have become utterly dependent on the money of - rich men and rich corporations.

So until a new party or conviction politician stands up and says "This is all wrong; we owe a duty to our own people first", then we are well and truly snookered.

[Suff]

At 60 million people the UK has a total workforce of 26m

Today we have 29m people in work.

Is there anything else to say about it.? At a very rough estimate this makes it 67m people in the country but if you calculate the "not working" too, at 6m, you get a workforce of 35m and a population of 80m.

Sobering thoughts. Even assuming, as this does, that these extra workers have an average family size.....

Hardly surprising that we have so many unemployed. At a 35m workforce, 6m not working is 8.5%.

These are figures you won't see anywhere, but it is relatively simple maths....

[Workingman]

I am trying to work this one out:

If two people work for 16 - 18 hours, say, neither of them can earn a "living" wage in most areas of employment, so both get "benefits" of some kind or other.

However, if only one of them worked a full week it is possible to remove that person from benefits altogether while making the other benefit dependent.

Caught between the Devil and the deep blue sea.

[Fugitive]

The Buzz-Word was job sharing a few years ago wasn't it? This was to let people have more time to spend with their children, have some leisure, take up hobbies rather than just work but left them short on income, brought the number of unemployed down so when did tax credits, working benefits kick in ? No it wouldn't take the people who work full time off benefits because most of them are paid the basic wage, a few more a living wage, so these incomes have to be subsidised until employers pay proper wages!

If they did pay these wages prices would rise, we'd all need more income or stop spending because nobody could afford things, job losses, so round and round in circles we go.

[Suff]

If they did pay these wages prices would rise, we'd all need more income or stop spending because nobody could afford things, job losses, so round and round in circles we go.

And this dies the nivana of wages which increase beyond inflation forever.....

But just like Flat Earthers, it never quite goes away....

[Workingman]

If they did pay these [living] wages prices would rise, we'd all need more income or stop spending because nobody could afford things, job losses, so round and round in circles we go.

Correct! So until we create *proper* jobs the carousel will keep on turning.

The trouble is that the politicians are blind to reality. What a mess!

[KateLMead]

And we need to stop paying millions to these quango's created and set up by government who supposedly counsel and get the unemployed back into work..
We have read that they are chancers who got on the band waggon, and the major one who lives in a mansion with her friends her name escapes me who was in the news who lost her contract due to fraud has now I understand landed a massive contract in the States.. SICK...