Friday 22 April 2016

The unemployment statistics.

Don't feel that I am expecting you to read all the articles in this post!

What I have learned through looking at this area is that it is so broken up and disconnected that it is difficult to get a handle on, the information I put forward here won't necessarily all fit together. One will take official statistics to show something, another will say that the official statistics are not at all valid or relevant and were deliberately chosen that way:

So, to start off. If we don't think about what the official statistics say right at this moment, from an overview it looks very bad. On top of how it feels in peoples personal lives that there are no opportunities and zero upward momentum (i.e. people getting degrees and working in supermarkets, people not being able to go to University for monetary reasons), an overview of the economy itself reveals an unpleasant picture:

The Baltic Dry index: The Baltic Dry index reveals global shipping. This has been at record low levels so how can a country say it is growing economically in these conditions? Surely this is the opposite of growing, not exporting or importing (this fact brings massively unusual questions doesn't it?) Is it that jobs are growing in the service sector but not in manufacturing areas? It is just weird.

Telegraph: Abandon ship: Baltic Dry Index hits record low

Telegraph: Shipping industry faces worse storm than after financial crisis, warns Maersk boss

Here are some other articles I have come across over the past few months:

The Guardian: Steel crisis grows as Caparo cuts 452 jobs

The Guardian: Chevron will cut up to 7,000 jobs as impact of falling oil prices continues



The Guardian: Royal Mail profits beat expectations as 3,000 jobs go

Reuters: HSBC to freeze salaries, hiring in 2016 in battle to cut costs - sources

The Guardian: The collapse of British housebuilding

The Guardian: Yahoo cutting workforce by 15% after announcing $4.4bn loss

Telegraph: British Gas to cut 500 jobs as it shuts insulation business


The Guardian: Barclays to axe 1,200 investment bank jobs worldwide

The Guardian: Oil services giant Schlumberger axes 10,000 jobs after $1bn loss

Telegraph: Asda to cut 'hundreds' of jobs after weak Christmas

Mirror: Morrisons to close 7 stores and axe hundreds of workers despite rise in sales

Something about this all makes me wonder if there is something that is less 'booming' about this 'recovery'?

I can't name an area that is obviously growing in the economy, some special device that is gaining more than it otherwise would be. Have fridges suddenly sold more? Are Iphones selling more than they used to...

I can't imagine, all in all, that consumer demand is overcoming this to a great extent:

This is money: Britain is sitting on a new £173bn debt time bomb - and with rates set to rise it's ticking even louder
But, I had the idea for this I expected it to be easy to explain, it seems the truth about how the unemployment statistics are being fudged isn't a big thing, but at least in part lots of little things.

A) Unemployed people can be made by the jobcentre to do 'workfare'. Which is work for the amount of money they normally get from jobseekers, that is far, far below the minimum wage. Kind of compulsory volunteering.

People that are on workfare, even though they are not employed are counted as such:

The Guardian: Statistics cast doubt on coalition's '500,000 new jobs' claim

B) Some of the people who are counted as employed are self employed because they can't find work but are not actually doing a lot more than very basic things under the title self employed:


C) The ONS data and Labor force participation survey that the government uses is not the best data to use. The ONS classes being employed as doing at least one hour of paid work a week. This could mean that people who are only working a minimum and are seeking more work are counted as employed:

Ripped off Britons Blog: GRAPHS AT A GLANCE: ARE THE IMPROVING UNEMPLOYMENT FIGURES ALL THEY SEEM TO BE? DIG A LITTLE DEEPER INTO THE STATS AND SEE WHAT YOU WILL FIND.

Scriptonite Daily: Here is How the UK Govt Hid 1 million Jobless From Official Unemployment Figures

D) Through the process of sanctioning claimant for minor or no transgressions. The sanctions are at the 'highest level since after world war two'. Many claimants are getting thrown off the books for no good reason (ah, we are seeing a pattern?):


E) The government is creating a lot of zero hour contracts (in fact that could be as much as half of the 'jobs' that have been recorded as created by the government since 2010). Zero hour contracts were 0.6% before the recessions, but are 2.5% now. That's a lot with a population of millions!

Also, another flaw in the governments narrative. Out of new jobs created (in what fields???) The number is somewhere between 1/11 and 1/40 of them are full time (it is more correctly imo 1/40). Even though workers are many workers are underemployed and seeking more hours.

The Independent: The employment chart that George Osborne doesn't want you to see

Full fact: TUC comment on full-time employment claim

The Independent: Britain's hidden army of under-employed

F) Not about unemployment, but a symptom of a non recovery is perhaps that wage growth is not happening, so basically people are losing money if you take into account the inflation is happening even though the government/ cabal are hiding it:



G) Another very important group here are people that are economically inactive but would like a job if they could get one:

The Guardian: How many unemployed people are there in the UK?

So there you have it, laying waste to the recovery and the 5.1% unemployment narrative! 

Zerohedge did a piece explaining that the real unemployment level was not 5% in America, but actually around 22%. There have been similar claims in England by Unions.

Donald Trump has spoken out against the unemployment statistics of the Obama administration. Saying that 'do you think we would be having these gatherings if the unemployment level was 5%? Also that the unemployment statistics and the way they are done now is a 'number created for politicians.

I will end this point with an article that looks at a very closely related area, which is poverty! In America, most Americans cannot afford a trip to A&E... nasty stuff!

Global research The Truth About Poverty In Britain Is Much Worse Than You Think

But now why would this be happening now? Mask falling off?:

Daily Mail: Fury as 'cynical' minister says growing fears over Brexit are to blame for rise in unemployment

A recent video with Stefan Molyneux had a financial analyst on his show that said that highly paid good jobs are getting fired and being replaced with minimum wage jobs!

Youtube: Why Economic Collapse Will Happen | Peter Schiff and Stefan Molyneux

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