Forum Topic

Economically Inactive

We hear a lot about the economically inactive six million. Who are they and how is the government going to make them return to work post Brexit?

Nicholas Beard ● 2174d33 Comments

And to follow up:-The UK is the bona fide global home of motorsport. With 4,500 related businesses in operation, the industry turns over £9 billion a year, plus six out of 10 Formula 1 racing teams are based in the UK, chiefly in south-east England's 'Motorsport Valley'

Philip Coe ● 2162d

You might be forgetting shipbuildiong and its associated trades there?For starters.

Rosco White ● 2162d

As far as I can see we have never been good at training our workers.

Nicholas Beard ● 2163d

You have to hand it to Ms Patel that, in one initiative, she wants to turn us against useful workers from other parts of Europe, and at the same time wants us to regard anyone here who's 'economically inactive' as some kind of scrounger! I suppose some people might need a hand getting their wheelchair and portable oxygen supply into the turnip fields, but I'm sure they'll find a way. And those unpaid family carers can always get a low paid job as a carer and use the money to pay for a, er, family carer perhaps! Well done Pritti! I wonder how she can possibly imagine that the great British public will fall for this kind of stuff. Oh, hang on..!It would be more logical for the UK to train up 'its own' skilled and well paid workers, such as doctors and engineers, rather than stealing them from other countries, and to continue letting 'unskilled workers' come from elsewhere to do the vital jobs we need doing.

Peter Evans ● 2165d

I hadn't heard it before!What about these people who call themselves social media influencers and say that they don't get paid in money?

Philippa Bond ● 2168d

LOL(To coin an earlier phrase.  :-) )

Tony Colliver ● 2168d

Was there any doubt that a recycled joke would not meet your approval Philippa?

Philip Coe ● 2168d

LOL

Philippa Bond ● 2169d

Not my joke as I read it elsewhere. Priti Patel may not be classified as economically inactive but certainly actively uneconomic.

Philip Coe ● 2169d

Priti said companies will have to train staff. We will have to pay, we have always been behind with training in the UK. Thats why we are in this situation. I read the perecentage of chidren leaving primary school unable to read or write and I thought it was propaganda against schools.

Nicholas Beard ● 2169d

And how many of those jobs need training that people don't have?There are Care Companies that have given back contracts because they cannot run them for the amount that Councils will pay.  We know that Council funded residents in Care Homes get a better rate than the self-funding ones who are therefore subsidising the Council funded ones.  Most of them could no doubt do with more staff.  We found that despite each room having an en suite shower that because two staff were deemed to be needed to help with a shower FIL didn't get them.  The en suite shower was one of the selling points and I will always feel guilty.  They tend to have few - maybe only one - Registered Nurse on duty at a time who is necessary for the drugs rounds. Anything wrong with someone and they can be sent off in an ambulance.  Care Homes too are strapped for cash!  There is also a shortage and you have to wait for a place.  In our case we got the place but then they closed to all new admissions because three patients had gone down with something...  so we were left waiting again.   

Philippa Bond ● 2169d

Here's some facts and figures published on the BBC website on Feb 19th in an article created by their Reality Check team.  Bottom line: almost 1.9 million more people could be persuaded to join the workforce by either carrots or sticks before the terminally ill are coaxed to rise from their deathbeds.....The claim: Staff shortages can be dealt with by training the 8.5 million people who are economically inactive.Reality Check verdict: Many of those people are students, carers, sick or retired - and fewer than two million of them say they would actually like to have a job.Home Secretary Priti Patel was asked on the BBC's Breakfast programme about the ways in which businesses might be able to deal with staff shortages under the government's new immigration system."We have over 8.45 million people in the UK aged between 16 and 64 who are economically inactive," she said."We want businesses to invest in them, invest in skilling them up."Economically inactive people are:not employed - they do not have a jobnot unemployed - they have not looked for a job in the past four weeks and/or are not available for work in the next two weeksThe latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures show 8.48 million 16-to 64-year-olds are economically inactive, so the home secretary is right on this.The ONS breaks down some of the reasons they fall into this category.The biggest category is students, who account for 27% of the inactive. They may be able to take on part-time jobs, but could not be relied upon to deal with the staff shortages that some business groups have warned about.Another 26% of the inactive population count as sick - almost all of whom are long-term sick.Next up, 22% of the inactive are those who are looking after their homes or caring for family members.The fourth most common reason for economic inactivity is people who have retired before the age of 65 - that's 13% of the total.There is a very small category - less than half a percent - who describe themselves as "discouraged workers".The last 11% are classified as "other", which includes people who say they have not yet started looking for work, those awaiting the results of job applications and some who say they do not need to work.The ONS says that of the 8.48 million economically inactive people:6.61 million do not want a job1.87 million would like a jobSo those 1.87 million could be targeted by businesses seeking to invest in their skills - although there may be various reasons why they are not currently looking for work.

Dominic Moore ● 2171d

Yes a lot of jobs have gone. There is however 80000 positions in the NHS. There are vacancies in the civil service, at least I have seen some advertised.

Nicholas Beard ● 2171d

How many of those jobs still exist?  A lot of them I'm sure have disappeared with new technology eg the typist.  Companies used to have typing pools and then there were all the individual secretaries with their bosses.  Most people I know type their own emails and keep their own diaries on their mobile or laptop.  How many of those are there now?  How many Office Managers do you need?Then there are the carers who are rushed off their feet on unrealistic timetables trying to get all their elderly and disabled service users up, washed, dressed, medicated and breakfasted in the morning.  And the writing up of the book and the meds.  Yes the morning because that is what most people want and of course that is what many are paying for now.  Yet they can have some quite complicated visits and if there are real mobility issues like needing to be hoisted they have to work in pairs.  They then run into the lunchtime rota when many of them don't get a break or lunch in between.They are supposed to be paid for travel between service users and there have been court cases because they aren't.  Ideally this would be less of a stressful visit with a little time for chat with someone who won't be seeing anyone else until the next visit - and time to look for that mislaid hearing aid or glasses or TV remote.  Elderly and disabled people tend to be a bit slower than youngsters and don't like being rushed and pulled and pushed about because the carer should be somewhere else already.  Does anybody want anyone to be doing this work who is only doing it because they have to or they will be sanctioned?  It isn't unskilled!  It is underpaid and undervalued.

Philippa Bond ● 2172d

Any society or culture that breeds fecklessness and an entitlement culture in those who are able bodied, and a reliance of other people to do its dirty work is on a downward spiral, both culturally and economically imo. Getting one's hands dirty with work used to be a badge of honour if I remember correctly.

Keith Iddon ● 2172d

Keith you are so right. I remember we were told all about factoey jobs. The girls were told how good it was in a shop. I remember a man came from the AEC at Southall to our school and told us, if we did technical drawing we could be draughtsmen, if we did metalwork try for a lathe operator. If we didnt do any of that then  we could have a future as a labourer. He then said if we had sisters tell them there were vacancies as typists. As you say thats how it was.

Nicholas Beard ● 2172d

Crop picking was traditionally done by locals and by foreign, usually European labourers here on a working visa.The future is AI and most crops will be picked by machine within a decade or so, if a discussion I heard on R4 is anything to go by.Care work is historically an 'entry level' job or done by middle aged women looking for what used to be called 'pin money'.Another fact of modern life is that the younger generation have been encouraged to go to college and uni. in their droves to get qualified grees in either hobby degrees or to do jobs that don't exist in the real world. They then have to take jobs for which they are either over qualified or not interested in.But as a tax payer, I am not interested in what they want or don't want. I took jobs I did not want or was not interested in, I stuck at it and made a good life on the back of it, as I am sure most of us have.

Keith Iddon ● 2172d

The Government's target is probably not the economically inactive but those that are unemployed and seeking employment but not that enthusiastically.

Philip Coe ● 2172d

I thought a lot of people did not want care sector jobs or crop picking. As you say it is difficult.

Nicholas Beard ● 2172d

Sorry..I wrote that in a hurry..just finished a busy night shift and am a bit tired.I hope you get the gist

Keith Iddon ● 2172d

Where do you 'understand' that from.I think this initiative is firmly targeted at those of working age who are claiming benefits.If someone of working age is living somehow without state benefits and not working, the disadvantage to the state is that they still require medical cover and their children need schools and health care etc. and they are not contributing NI or tax.They will also quite possibly want claim some kind of pension benefit when or care when they get older.It is a very difficult area and there are many pitfalls to making hard and fast rules, but surely if someone can work it seems daft to import someone from another country to do the job that they could do, whilst paying state to the refuseniks.The whole idea of the imperfect universal credit idea is built around this.It needs a lot of tinkering.

Keith Iddon ● 2172d

I understood that economically inactive people are not claiming benefit. If they are, easy, offer them a job and if they dont want it stop the benefits. Pre Brexit it was said over and over Brits wanted the jobs. What happened?

Nicholas Beard ● 2172d

I can understand the reasoning behind this and as long as it targets those who won't work rather than those who can't. I know several people who claim this that and the other from the state and who are quite capable of working, as I am sure many others do.

Keith Iddon ● 2172d

As an economically inactive person I hope that Priti Patel doesn't arrive at my door to send me potato picking. Does it mean that along with the royal family and russian tax Dodgers that we will be sent into the fields

Peter Chadburn ● 2172d

I have built a bear trap at my front door in case Pritti Patel comes knocking.

Susan Kelly ● 2172d

The Victorians provided workhouses.

Philippa Bond ● 2173d

Before AS levels existed sixth-formers had more time to spend during that first year of doing some community work.  I remember there were visits to the elderly In care homes and concerts and meals for the elderly at school.It is a shame that community work like this doesn't happen at this point in teenagers' lives any more in the same way.  It might help them in future.

Philippa Bond ● 2173d

Some figures from Full Fact (an independent fact checking charity)The biggest reason is that a lot of these people (27%) are students. 26% say they’re economically inactive because they’re too sick (most of whom have a long-term illness). 22% are looking after family or the home. And 13% have taken early retirement.12% said there was some other reason for their economic inactivity.

Philip Coe ● 2173d

"Economically inactive" is a label applied to everyone between the ages of 16 and 64 who are neither employed or unemployed but actively seeking work.  So it includes students, people who take early retirement, those too ill to work.  A large number are unpaid carers looking after relatives.

Philip Coe ● 2173d

Oh Dear.    😁

Rosco White ● 2173d

Its true!

Nicholas Beard ● 2173d

"....... terminally ill, but the DWP still thinks they are able to work."That's a bit over the top isn't it?

Rosco White ● 2174d

Many of those classed as economically inactive are terminally ill, but the DWP still thinks they are able to work.

Libby Kemp ● 2174d