Tag Archives: unemployment

A tailored response is required to tackle cities’ unemployment challenges

By Paul Swinney | Published 23rd January 2012 - 8:54 am

Today, Centre for Cities launches Cities Outlook 2012, our fifth annual ‘health check’ on UK cities, and this year we have focused on unemployment in cities.

The report, sponsored by IBM and the LGA, shows that there is a strong geographical nature to unemployment across UK cities. But unemployment is not evenly spread across the UK. While cities such as York and Cambridge have relatively low levels of unemployment, cities such as Grimsby and Hull have a much larger problem.

The variation in unemployment across cities is stark. While the number of people in Cambridge claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) is just …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged centre for cities | 3 Comments

PMQs: Miliband hoist by his Balls’ petard

By Paul Walter | Published 19th January 2012 - 8:24 am

Let’s start with what Ed Balls, Labour’s Shadow Chancellor said in the Guardian on January 14th:

My starting point is, I am afraid, we are going to have keep all these cuts. There is a big squeeze happening on budgets across the piece. The squeeze on defence spending, for instance, is £15bn by 2015. We are going to have to start from that being the baseline. At this stage, we can make no commitments to reverse any of that, on spending or on tax. So I am being absolutely clear about that.

So, it was something of a surprise when Ed …

Posted in PMQs | Also tagged andrew george, david cameron, david hamilton, economy, ed balls, ed miliband, tessa munt | 15 Comments

Opinion: A bright new year?

By Linda Jack | Published 4th January 2012 - 11:25 am

For me, this year is starting as it is for millions of our fellow citizens – dealing with a complete change, having found myself redundant.

I am though, one of the lucky ones. I don’t need to worry about getting a new job for a while. I have the luxury of taking my time and hopefully finding something that suits me rather than being forced to take something, anything, to keep the wolf from the door.

But most don’t have that luxury, for our young people coming out of school or university with all the enthusiasm and aspiration of youth finding themselves …

Posted in Op-eds | 9 Comments

Opinion: troubling times in the jobs market

By Prateek Buch | Published 16th December 2011 - 8:30 am

Despite uncertainty over the statistics (don’t worry, this isn’t a post about p-values and standard deviations), we can say with some confidence (say, 95%) that the UK jobs market remains in a volatile state with many people out of work or underemployed. With public sector jobs being shed rapidly as a result of austerity measures, and the private sector unable or unwilling to create more jobs than it sheds due to falling demand (going against Chancellor George Osborne’s expectations), the net result is a devastating lack of work for millions of people, …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged co-ops, regional growth fund, trade unions, youth unemployment | 3 Comments

PMQs: Miliband 1 Barn Door 1

By Paul Walter | Published 14th December 2011 - 12:53 pm

It was the last pre-Christmas Prime Minister’s Questions today and we saw the return of Nick Clegg loyally sitting at the PM’s right-hand side.

Ed Miliband started on the economy, and the news that unemployment is up again. He quoted David Cameron’s words when he came to office, saying that jobs would be “uppermost”. “What’s gone wrong?” asked the opposition leader.

Cameron’s main thrust during the 2010 election campaign was that new private sector jobs should lead the economic recovery and more than replace lost public sector jobs. Miliband did a good job of exposing that this bright idea has allegedly failed. …

Posted in PMQs | Also tagged adrian sanders, david cameron, ed miliband, european union, nick clegg, simon wright | 10 Comments

Youth unemployment: when one in five isn’t one in five

By Mark Pack | Published 13th April 2011 - 6:37 pm

It normally sounds pretty obvious – you work out the unemployment rate by looking at the number of people in work and the number of people seeking work. But sometimes that leads to rather odd figures, as today’s youth unemployment figures demonstrate.

The Guardian’s headline, One in five young people out of work (headline used on Guardian news page; there’s a longer slightly different headline on the story itself), s pretty typical.

But take your way to page 36, Table 14 and look at the raw numbers and it looks rather different.

Number of 16-24 year-olds: 7,337,000.
Number of 16-24 year-olds unemployed: 963,000

In …

Posted in News | Also tagged journalism, office of national statistics | 31 Comments

LibLink … Vince Cable: Loaded, yet STILL bankers are not doing their job lending to help businesses expand

By The Voice | Published 19th October 2009 - 5:55 pm

Writing in the Mail yesterday (yes, the Mail: the newspaper which last week published the most complained-about article in British history) Lib Dem deputy leader Vince Cable contrasts two of the big stories of the last week: the investment bankers, announcing record bonuses, alongside the news of another big rise in unemployment. Here’s an excerpt:

A year after the collapse and rescue of the banking system by the taxpayer, the number of British workers without full-time jobs is still rising: 120,000 more in the three months to August.

But the big international banks – mainly US-owned but major players in

…

Posted in LibLink | Also tagged banking, recession, vince cable | 1 Comment

Unemployment: Lib Dems on the bleak national picture

By Stephen Tall | Published 15th October 2009 - 6:50 pm

Three separate Lib Dem press releases ping into the Voice’s inbox, each of them them telling a depressing story about the human impact of the recession.

First up, Lib Dem shadow work and pensions secretary Steve Webb on the doubling of long-term unemployment in the last year alone:

Ministers try to spin the slower rise in headline figures as progress, but long-term unemployment has doubled in a year and if it is not tackled now it will be a devastating legacy of this recession.

Posted in Scotland, Wales | Also tagged alistair carmichael, jenny randerson, recession, steve webb | 3 Comments

Richard Tracey: Tory triumph or tall tale?

By Helen Duffett | Published 19th August 2009 - 9:20 am

A Tory London Assembly Member wants his party to take the credit for a brief drop in London’s unemployment figures, while the annual results show a different picture.

Richard Tracey, Conservative London Assembly Member for Merton and Wandsworth (and a former Conservative Minister and MP for Surbiton) proudly wrote to the South London Press in March 2009:

“London has bucked the tragedy of rising unemployment – it fell between November and January, whereas the UK as a whole saw a rise.

It is no coincidence that unemployment in London has actually fallen in the last three months, given taxpayer-focused Conservative administrations run so much of it.

Richard Tracey

London Assembly member for Merton and Wandsworth”

In a rather desperate attempt to make a political point he grabbed at the very limited unemployment figures between November 2008 and January 2009 for evidence. The letter was even titled ‘Tory Triumph.’

Well, five months later, the Tories must be less triumphant.

Posted in London, News | Also tagged london assembly, richard tracey | 2 Comments

Daily View 2×2: 11 June 2009

By Alex Foster | Published 11th June 2009 - 8:05 am

Ah, another day, another daily view. Suddenly in the blink of an eye, polling day is a whole week behind us. Lives are being lived, new councillors swearing the oath of office and new groups working out how to work with each other in future.

Two big stories

And unlike m’colleague Alix who could trumpet an end to expenses stories, sadly today they’re back with a vengeance, as the Telegraph digs into Shahid Malik.

But never fear – “the recession has ended” ! The Independent is so confident of its analysis that it feels the need to put …

Posted in Daily View | Also tagged barcharts, costigan quist, facebook, mark pack, mps expenses, shahid malik, statistical illiteracy, tories, viz | 1 Comment

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