If you’ve got a ‘proper’ job, hang on to it

Unemployment is down. Good news, of course. But there’s always a cloud attached to a silver lining. An astonishing1.5 million of us are actually officially in jobs we don’t want, temping while we look for something better; a version, I would say, of hidden unemployment. Chances are they are also in work way below their qualifications, let alone aspirations, and not adding much value to the economy.

Second, long term unemployment has breached the three-quarters of a million mark, and getting people back to work is notoriously difficult, especially as our “jobless recovery” progresses.

Third, youth unemployment remains stubbornly high – 35.9 per cent for 16-17 year olds. And we all know how many public sector workers are about to get the chop – 600,000 plus according to government leaks.

If you’ve got a “proper” job, hang on to it.

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• julianzzz

  The bankers bailout was massive, banks are supposed to hold a basic level of capital (amazingly low 1 to 50) they didn’t, thus when savers rushed to take their cash out it wasn’t there. A similar thing happened with many public sector pensions, 16% of life salary was taken from teachers salaries and it was spent, by the treasury, through the long years of the Thatcher government onto Labour, both parties spent the teachers pension and left it for their children to foot the bill. The bankers money went to fund speculation in the financial markets and dodgy loans across the world including the American mortgage market. So funds across the globe e.g. even the Norwegian dentist’s pension have been pillaged, the money has gone to the bankers, estate agents, lawyers and other pin-striped bandits across the globe. During the last decade something happened in the USA, although the country enjoyed massive growth, the middle and lower classes became impoverished, only the top 10% made money, big money. The Tea party is a symptom of their anger.

  In the UK both Conservative and Labour governments have persued banker friendly policies for decades, manufacturing was shipped abroad to sweatshops and grim mines across the globe, capital was invested in oppression and the English jobless were thrown the bare minimum to live on. When the figures got embarassing both parties promoted the idea and status of sickness amongst the unemployed. To avoid child poverty, both parties have allowed a system to grow which pays the unemployed to have children whilst pouring money into schemes to help the growing numbers of poor children. Poverty and poor education have proved to be extremely costly, the immediate savings made by throwing people on the scrapheap have been swamped by the resulting social costs in the following decades. Where’s the money gone? abroad, in the banksters pockets, through betting the farm on dodgy deals, into companies across the globe, into enormous mortgages as property price inflation and speculation has caused a housing crisis. Into booming social service and pension bills as the result of imprudent past policy has dumped itself on our doorstep. Money also goes into the result of poor infrastructure, regional policies to balance the injustice between regions, the result of not investing in high speed rail cutting off the south from the rest of the country, high energy costs through the lack of insulation and energy efficiency. You name it, bad policy decisions by past governments have come home to roost, a failure to regulate big business and pass back the resulting social costs of their actions back to them being right at the top of the list.

• http://dogsolitude-v2.livejournal.com/ dogsolitude_uk

  My understanding is that the Government owes the money to folks who bought UK Government-issued bonds, or ‘Gilts’.Additionally, we, the members of the general public, owe on our mortgages, credit cards and overdrafts to banks.

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