UK unemployment rate hits five-year high of 5.2%
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1l7pedyzjeo
Posted by ShanTheMan1995
UK unemployment rate hits five-year high of 5.2%
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1l7pedyzjeo
Posted by ShanTheMan1995
25 Comments
What’s frightening is no labour voter will be concerned with this. Because we can just keep taking from those with any kind of wealth and nothing bad will happen, because fuck em
Labour has increased business costs (eg National Insurance) and regulation (eg Employment Rights Bill), and I suspect both of these have contributed to this rise.
Also, white collar jobs are being offshored at a frightening rate and Labours recent Double Contributions Convention (DCC) clause in the trade deal will have some impact.
About to become unemployed myself soon, ai and offshoring has come for me, been in the workplace since 1990 and 22 years with current employer.
The most worrying thing about this figure is that it doesnt take ‘Economic inactivity’ into account…… which is defined by the below –
# Economic inactivity
People not in employment who have not been seeking work within the last 4 weeks and/or are unable to start work within the next 2 weeks.
Been out of work 6 months at this point.
10+ years experience in role or similar, bilingual and a military veteran. I’m getting some interviews, but also becoming accustomed to finishing just outside the podium.
It’s the toughest I’ve ever known it. May the odds be ever in your favour…
The cost of running a business has risen in the last year or so, but what’s the alternative? We have millions enduring a cost of living crisis, of course the government has to do something to raise wages.
Basic minimum wage pre-2024 wasn’t enough to live on after Truss’ inflation budget and skyrocketing energy costs. So what other alternative did the Gov have?
AI and digital solutions scooping up the jobs that once took multiple people. Add ontop of that increase Buisness rates/NI/everything else Buisness pay you can see why.
Just gonna set this one down here
https://labour.org.uk/change/kickstart-economic-growth/
What everyone here is failing to see is this is a *five year high*
The last time it was this high was Covid.
The time before that was in 2016. Under the conservatives. Who managed to f**k it up without AI.
But god forbid we vote Labour because we want a decent wage.
I’m assuming everyone will continue blaming the Tories and move on.
Maybe the government starts taking action when we hit 7- 8%
I’m aware of one large bank that has axed a whole know your customer team consisting of 100s of people, replacing most of them with ‘AI’
We’re on the edge of quite a big deal with this sort of thing; I know in that particular case the computers are doing a pretty damn fine job and, as time goes on, there will be more cases where they do an equally find job. We’re seeing lots of small businesses with logos made by AI, entire social media accounts and email campaigns for larger companies that are all AI copywriting. Sure, some of those tasks would have just not happened without AI, but a good chunk of them are humans being displaced from work.
Governments need to be acting on this yesterday. It’s quite a bit more than ‘muh NI increase’
What the UK government fail to understand, for reasons which are beyond me, is that increasing wages and nics is a direct cost to every single business.
A business struggling to survive on thin margins can not continue with additional costs like this.
All the government had to do was increase corporation tax by 1% so that profitable businesses carry the burden.
No surprise, a monkey could work out our tax policies are destructive.
Coming up to five months for me. My sector is fucked and I’ve got no idea what I’m going to do long term.
My company keeps making redundancies at the “bottom” (the people that actually produce work) to save money.
But they have the money to create new high paying roles at the top, thinking it’ll solve the fact we’re not producing quality work and fast enough lol. They want all 3 sides of the triangle: good, cheap, and fast.
Cancel some visas. Immigration policy should follow the job market. When British trained nurses can’t get work, why are we renewing overseas nurses visas?
Everyone blaming Labour, as if the real problem wasn’t companies taking us for an absolute ride in the first place. If companies can’t afford to pay people the national minimum wage, that should say more about them than the government of the day. Certain industries like IT also had arguably excessive hiring during COVID, and have been “correcting” that since.
I left school back in 2010, when the economy was still battered from the financial crash. I remember how horrific the job market was back then – one group interview stands out in particular, where a teen girl had a panic attack when she realised that over 100 people were being interviewed for one part-time Tesco cashier job. I’ve never known a period of “growth” where the job market was anything other than depressing, regardless of which colour rosette was in power.
Repeating my comment on this same news: One to keep an eye on but not a big deal. Optimum unemployment for efficiency in an economy is between 3-5%. We are just outside that at 5.2%. https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/figuring-out-efficient-unemployment
Im a tech consultant working with a number of uk firms and from my first hand experience, its offshoring that’s sweeping through companies atm rather than AI layoffs
Between 1984 and 1986 the unemployment rate was about 11%. That was during the apparent boom years of the 80s
Whether it be considering whether to use carrot or stick, the government should be taking a long hard look at companies that are offshoring jobs
Maybe if we didn’t need 10 years of experience for entry level roles, maybe if jobs made working worth it by paying substantially more than benefits, and maybe if jobs weren’t being made obsolete by fucking AI, more people would be fucking working!
Cany help but notice the stunning lack of people in this thread, yknow, the ones who are quicker than lightning to point out how great Starmer and Labour are doing
It’s almost like making it more expensive to hire anyone is having a detrimental effect on the economy…