Post No.: 0851
Furrywisepuppy says:
If there aren’t enough jobs then ‘fighting hard to get what few jobs there are’ won’t really help reduce the nation’s unemployment figures. This should be obvious. As an extremely simplified illustration – if there are only 10 vacancies available but 100 jobseekers then it’s guaranteed to leave 90 people without jobs who must therefore need to claim unemployment benefits.
Let’s run two scenarios. Everyone fights fang and claw for those 10 jobs – this results in 10 people who get jobs and 90 people who won’t. In another scenario where everyone fights but not that hard for those 10 jobs – this would also result in 10 people who get jobs and 90 people who won’t!
Thus ‘fighting hard to get what few jobs there are’ or ‘believing in oneself’ won’t make the slightest difference to employment, or unemployment benefit claimant, rates from the perspective of a government running a country. Thus a government minister would be erroneous to blame the unemployment rate on the unemployed rather than on the government for failing to stimulate the economy.
From an individual’s perspective, everyone hopes to be one of those who beat the competition and secure themselves a job. But a job deficit will guarantee a number of jobless jobseekers that matches at least the number of the deficit.
What’ll make a difference to the unemployment figures will be the public and private sector creating more jobs i.e. 100 suitable jobs per 100 able jobseekers. Only 10 jobs available will mean only 10 employees created. Therefore politicians should take this broad frame perspective and not blame someone who cannot get a job, because if they got a job, it’d only mean that someone else didn’t, and that unemployment figure – that the politicians are ultimately responsible for because they’re the ones getting paid to supposedly run the country – will remain unchanged. Social welfare department staff need to understand this logic too.
No jobs? Create your own. Although dangerous, people living in slums recycle metals from landfill sites, for instance. Entrepreneurship or self-employment should be encouraged. But that can be difficult, especially during economic downturns. And again, governments can themselves do things to promote and support entrepreneurship through public investment.
It’s the same with social housing. People can ‘play the game’, but if there are only, say, 100 houses for every 200 families then there’ll always logically be 100 without a house, whoever gets those houses or doesn’t. The only moral solution is building more social, or at least affordable, housing.
It’s similar with food or any other limited resource. People could fight for what’s available but there’ll still be individuals left without if there isn’t enough for everybody initially – and that’d be a failure of leadership from a government’s perspective. But, with certain parties, it’s almost like they’re precisely hoping that the unemployed or poor will just fight amongst themselves rather than direct their vexation towards the government! (With certain politicians, it’s almost like they’re precisely hoping that the poor will just literally die because dead people can’t vote against them! They lack empathy and compassion because they’ve personally lived a fortunate life.)
It’s like a zookeeper throwing a scrap of meat amongst a pride of starving fuzzy lions in a cage, knowing that there isn’t enough to feed them all; so the lions fight between themselves over that scrap rather than blame the zookeeper for the inevitability that, whoever the particular lions will be, some of them will go without enough food.
It’s even the same with inspiring kids to become athletes to represent their country in the Olympics. If, say, 1,000 British youngsters were inspired to become gold medal pole-vaulters – 998 will be guaranteed to fail every 4 years no matter if they worked hard and believed in themselves because only 2 gold medals (one for a male and one for a female, as it currently stands) are given out for that event. It’s not like doctors, where all doctors can potentially save lives and be ‘winners’ because it’s not a competition. It’s perhaps fair enough that in sports there’ll be many losers for every winner. That’s the nature of competition. But when it involves the hopes of young children, they need their mental health looked after when, in this case, the vast majority will have their dreams dashed if being a top athlete was built up to be their dream.
In reality, jobseekers will apply to multiple jobs. Yet the same logic remains – if there aren’t enough viable vacancies then we’re guaranteed to have unemployed jobseekers no matter how hard they apply or how much they believe in themselves, and the unemployment problem will remain. If there are vacancies but they’re not being filled because there aren’t enough relevantly qualified jobseekers then the government can again do something about supplying the training through public funding. Taxing the rich more could pay for this. (Well when the financial institutions caused the 2007/2008 Financial Crisis, many of them got a nanny state to bail them out! And the economic crisis they left behind brought job losses and austerity that especially affected the poorest.)
The government might be fair to blame jobseekers as a whole if there are enough jobs around but people are simply too picky and aren’t applying for them. There shouldn’t be a culture of ‘work shaming’ (shaming others for taking jobs that are considered beneath them) – yet there often is this judgement, and often from the very same people who try to shame those who are out of work and claiming unemployment benefits(!)
However, if those jobs are unattractive because they don’t pay enough to live on then something is perhaps wrong with the economic system.
Insecure employment, zero-hours contracts in the ‘gig economy’, and apprenticeships, are often used to artificially boost employment figures.
It has been argued by some that the economic system is working towards an ever-increasing trend of zero-hours contracts and other insecure employment. Their flexibility does suit the needs or lifestyles of some workers, but the laws need to catch up with them, as they have started to do in the UK with entitlements to sick pay and holiday pay for instance. They have to be liveable on for those who want to work equivalent to fulltime hours in such jobs. People who work fulltime should morally always receive a living wage in general. Unemployment benefits need to be liveable on, and working fulltime needs to pay better than being on unemployment benefits.
But employers might pay less in National Insurance/social security contributions if employee weekly wages are below a certain limit, which will affect these employees’ state pensions if/when they retire (and affect what can be used to pay for public hospitals, schools, etc. today). With insecure employment, they could sack employees just before they’ve worked long enough to be entitled to holiday pay, fringe benefits or even some employee rights.
There are also these dodgy temporary employment agencies, salary sacrifice schemes, and ‘umbrella’ employment agencies that take major deductions from workers’ wages; as well as tax avoidance schemes, avoiding paying workers at least the minimum wage, and the hidden use of slave labour or modern slavery.
Apprenticeships are created to try to fill in skills gaps in the economy – gaps that the free market fails to automatically close – but they must be implemented correctly and in the industries that most need them rather than don’t. They mustn’t be used to exploit workers for cheap labour for little skills-teaching and job prospects in return; businesses must give a high-quality service to their apprentices; and businesses mustn’t be merely profiting from them by paying apprentices lower than the national minimum wage for effectively doing the work of a regular worker, whilst claiming millions from the taxpayer for taking part in such schemes.
The government ultimately needs to try to balance out the number of jobs available to the number of job hunters because in an ‘employers’ market’ (as in employers have the overwhelming negotiating power because it’s the employees who can’t be picky), it leads to a situation where workers are exploited. Companies can say ‘show us how much you want this job or how much you want to go far in this industry… by working for free for months on end in the beginning’. Passion becomes exploited. Completely unpaid internships in the fashion or media industry, or being ‘forced to voluntarily’ work 70 hours/week but getting paid for only 40 of those hours during ‘crunch’ time in the videogames industry, are extreme examples. This also favours those who can afford to do so (like those whose parents are wealthy enough to support them during this early phase of their career) without sacrificing their mental or physical health. And because only a small percentage of those interns will make it in these industries, the rest are made to look like failures who didn’t have what it took. Moreover, if they try to raise the issue, they may be labelled as complainers!
Unpaid internships are almost like free lunches to firms – they provide work experience for the interns in return for their labour, but it’s a highly exploitative situation because regular employees also get experience as well as pay. Of course the interns consented to not getting paid, but possibly only because they felt they didn’t have a reasonable alternative choice if they wished to enter their desired industry. Many countries have laws that regulate internships, such as that it’s okay for work to be unpaid if it’s ‘not real work as a regular employee would otherwise do’ – yet if so, then what value is this experience for the intern if they’re not getting real work experience?!
The more powerless yet desperate for work the workforce is, the more they can be exploited by unethical practices. And this is why the workforce at the lower-wage end needs more protection through laws and regulations.
Poverty is a vicious cycle too – very poor citizens in desperation may enter prostitution, steal, or deal drugs, and then receive a criminal record, which makes it harder for them to get another job; they may drink alcohol excessively or take other drugs to self-medicate their stress; they may become homeless, which means they cannot open a bank account to accept a salary because they need a fixed address (unless special schemes are available); and their physical and mental health, including their self-esteem and confidence, will be negatively impacted, which could affect how well they interview for jobs. If they’re young, they may go hungry and fall behind on their education because they lack basic materials, for which a computer and Internet connection are considered basic resources nowadays (this is true for adults when they’re trying to find jobs too).
AI and automation are increasingly taking some lower-skilled (and higher-skilled) jobs away thus governments must not sleepwalk into this potentially growing unemployment problem of the near future either.
In summary, there must be enough viable jobs in the market for people, and people need to be taught and trained with the relevant skills to do them if necessary, otherwise it’d be the failure of the government rather than the people. Alternatively, the unemployed will need to be provided adequate social welfare (and that’s why some experts have considered the idea of a ‘universal basic income’ for all).
From the perspective of trying to tackle unemployment and build a strong overall economy – which is one of the supposed primary jobs of those in government – it’s not good if, say, only 5% of people who want a job get a decent job within the industry they desire and are qualified for, with the rest without jobs, or doing jobs they’re not best at doing or that are highly insecure. For the strongest economy – everybody needs to be happy about their employment situation. Otherwise perhaps it’s the politicians who need to get fired for failing to properly do their jobs!
Woof!
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