The Great Recovery Illusion

On the BBC television political discussion show last night, in which a panel drawn from the political, media and academic communities field questions from an audience drawn from the general public, a panellist who I assume was a conservative was squawking about how well the UK economy was doing, citing that unemployment had fallen again in recent months and was now down to levels last seen before the dotcom crash in 2000.

An audience member was quickly on his feet to point out, to applause from the whole audience that the figure was misleading as people in zero hours contracts and part time jobs are classed as ‘in work’ to get them off the statistics. The young man could also have reminded the programmes studio and television audience that people who are out of work for two years are reclassified as ‘not economically active’ and removed from the unemployment register. Even if these people would love to work and are eager to grab any reasonably well paid job available, they are not counted as unemployed.

Then there are the lost legions of the partially disabled, the thousands encouraged to sign up for toytown degree courses at tenth rate colleges and universities. and don’t get me started on the non jobs in the public sector, the equalities offices, gender awareness councillors and so on.

This manipulation of statistics to create a false impression of economic – if not health then only ‘feeling-a-bit-off-colourism’ is not only going on in Britain and among our EU colleagues. With every months employment statistics from Washington, Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge return to one of his favourite themes, the the recovery in the US waiter and bartender economy.
Every month, if we look back, we see Washington claiming the U S economy has created stupendous numbers of ‘new jobs’ (I’m not sure but I have the impression a lot of these are just a case of hiring a replacement for someone who retired, but changing the job title slightly.

Overall however, due to population growth via immigration, in Europe and North America the proportion of the whole population actually in work is regularly hitting new lows. We live in an era of universal deception.

RELATED POSTS:
The Jobless Economy

Politicians, economists and others with an interest in talking up the economy to get us all spending and taking on debt and mortgage loans again may rave about recovery. With our industrial base so depleted where will the jobs come from that we need to lead a recovery?” They may call it fiscal prudence, we call it loonytoons economics…

No Jobs For The Masses In The New Economy Despite University Education
No matter how leaders like David Cameron and Barack Obama try to talk up their economies or assure voters the jobs market is improving, growth returning and unemployment will soon start falling, the truth is change does not equal progress and forcing the pace of social change has only masked the true depth of economic and social problems. One of these is unemployment and particularly joblessness among the young. Even a universdity education does not provide a guaranteed career path.

The Real Story Behind Obama’s Job Creation
Last week’s announcement by the U.S. labour department that the American economy had created 216,000 jobs in March was seized on as cause for celebrations by sychophantic Obamessiah cultists desperate for something to praise “The greatest human being who ever lived” for. Obama cult inhouse newssheets The New York Times, the Washington Post reported that …

The 99ers: Death Of The American Dream.

The 99ers are a new social class created by the economic recession in the USA. This new demographic, not one the advertizing industry will be interested in are jobless people whose unemployment benefit (job sekers in UK parlance) benefit has run out and thus who have dropped off the unemployment statistics. But even for people who are not 99ers times are hard scross the pond …

British Workers Compete With Immigrants For Jobs

The main controversy in today’s news stories is the response of Work amd Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith to the citicisms made by the Archbishop of Canterbury about the government’s handling of the long term unemployment problem.

More Graduates, Less Graduate Jobs by Xavier Connolly

All the while Labour were in power they kept muttering about the knowledge economy as if simply having attained a University degree was a marketable asset. In reality were were spending fortunes on educating people to be call centre clerks, shelf fillers and burger flippers. Now the coalition must find a way to deal with the problem of having too many graducates in areas that offer no jobs.

Jobless Benefit Claimants rise in October
Once again, in a welter of obfuscatory statistics we learn that while the overall number of jobless people has fallen the number claiming jobseekers allowance as risen. Though presented as good news by the government this can only mean more people have gone past the time limit for claiming jobseekers allowance and been transferred to income support, claimants of which are not included on the figures.

Graduate Unemployment Reaches A New High News that there are 70 applicants for each graduate vacancy as this years University output start the soul destroying business of seeking jobs cannot have cheered anybody. But what are te reasons for this disastrous state of affairs. Could it be anything to do with governments pushing University for all to mask the true extent of our declime as an industrial nation?

No Real Jobs In The New Economy

Gordon Brown’s Labour government and the failing Obama administration in the USA, feeling power slipping through their fingers, are trying to lull people into a false sense of security with claims the ‘green’ and the ‘digital’ economies will restore prosperity. This as a blatant lie, nobody needs a PhD in economics or Social Science to understand that the “new economy” of green businesses and digital commerce will destroy not create real jobs…

Minimum Wage Folly A Return To Speenhamland?

The minimum wage is meant to alleviate poverty and resolve problems with unemployment but as Ian R. Thorpe shows, as with all the cure all, politically correct social engineering wheezes dreamed up by the “progressive left” every time a minimum wage scheme is implemented it achieves the opposite of what is intended…

The Real Unemployment Figure

New unemployment figures released yesterday show unemployment fell by 0.1% in the three months December to FebruarY. Contained in the figures was a statistic that undermines government talk of an economic upturn. This is the number of people in work. Headline unemployment has fallen the number of people in work has also fallen. What’s going on?

Elsewhere: [Boggart Blog]…[Little Nicky Machiavelli]… [ Ian’s Authorsden Pages ]… [Scribd]…[Wikinut] … [ Boggart Abroad] … [ Grenteeth Bites ] … Ian Thorpe at Flickr ] … [ Tumblr ] … [Ian at Minds ] … [ The Original Boggart Blog] … [ Authorsden blog ]