Seems as if a huge number of jobs are being lost, in Tatra Steel, Comet, a pizza Factory locally,nhs and many more in construction firms.

Will there ever be full employnment, or is it just engineered to have a lot of unemployed to keep costs down for comapnies, eg plenty of workers to do the jobs for less.

Should there be a complete ban on non essential overtime,to help reduce the unemployment figures by employing these people, on reduced wages or part time work.

Full employment for neds? It’ll never happen.

its a misnomer, you either have job shortage, or labour shortage, you could retire people at a reasonable age(55)– cut down on hours or share jobs or pay people properly, and do away with the massive income inequalities that seem to be accepted these days !!

Isn’t there a relationship between employment and inflation? Full employment leading to higher inflation, or something like that…

If we did have full employment, were would the people at the job centre work? 😯

Igmc

– cut down on hours or share jobs or pay people properly, and do away with the massive income inequalities that seem to be accepted these days

French unemployment is running at 10.2% and among 18-25 years olds it’s something like 25%.

French unemployment is running at 10.2% and among 18-25 years olds it’s something like 25%.

and its not here?–the figures have been that distorted that it would be better to count economically active and inactive to get a true picture, those over 65 would be exempt.

Cheeky edit to the thread title…….

As DJ15 says if we have full employment whenever a job does come up then people can ask for enormous pay rises to move. And then offered even more by current employer to stay leading to inflation.

I have some vague recollection from Economics 35 years ago that 5% unemployment would be about right for the economy as a whole. Not so good for the 5% though…

I thought what was termed “full” employment by economists actually meant just some low percentage of unemployed.

Apparently so.

druidh – Member
Cheeky edit to the thread title…..

It needed an e.

Also how many people unemployed or not are working on the side for pin money, we sometimes get the answer when we have done a quote, i know a chap down the pub who will do it cheaper.

Cyclical innit.

Give it a few years and it will all be rosy again*.

*or Labour will get in borrow lots of money, employ everybody in the public sector and everything will seem rosy 🙂

Unless we reign in this Globalisation thing and add in a bit of protectionism, then I don’t see how we can get back to high levels of employment (bubbles / large scale financial fraud aside).

With so many cheap labour countries coming on tap it’s hard to see how you can employ the majority of low skilled workers. Obviously you need some to do jobs which physically need to be done over here, but after that companies are either outsourcing or automating and a lot of traditional blue collar work is vanishing.

Even traditional white collar work is taking a big hit. Go back 15 years and telecoms (my industry) was a huge cash cow, then Huawei and ZTE came along and under cut everyone and Nortel, Nokia, Marconi, Ericsson, Alcatel, Lucent, etc are either liquidated, going bust slowly / quickly, or losing massive market share / margin.

If you have to compete against the whole world, it’s flippin tough!

There is still debate as to the exact meaning of full employment – but generally it is accepted that this does not = zero unemployment, since there will always be some people who are UN at any given wage rate (frictional and structural UN).

Its a nice idea that the Tories deliberately encourage UN to keep wage costs, but so far off the truth that it is little more than a fairy tale.

Low unemployment is a core macro economic policy of any government and is naturally more of an issue in times of weak economic growth. Other objectives such as inflation are associated typically with periods of higher growth although the simple trade off between the two variables (the Phillips Curve) has long been disproved – inflation and UN trended in the same direction in many economies from the mid 1990s through to the crisis starting in 2007.

edit: good article in yesterday’s FT by Brian Groom in which he described how contrary to popular opinion, jobs are being created at the bottom and top ends of the job market but not in the middle ie high and low-skilled jobs are rising. Plus private sectore employment has offset public sector job cuts albeit at a cost of wages and productivity.

Nope because there is a small but growing percentage of the population who used to do very basic unskilled jobs that no longer exist. There is another small but growing portion of the population that have made themselves unemployable due their attitude to work.

ah the logic of the right–blame the poor !

There is no desire left within this country to return to any real sustainable kind of industry, the people who could afford to invest simply will not! This in my opinion is based purely on their greed!
Cameron is a member of this clique and will keep watch on this situation until his term ends.
The days of altruistic, philanthropic industrialists are long gone.
The end game will eventually be a country with a small specialist manufacturing base, a public service sector constantly adjusted by the party currently in power and a needy (probably) unskilled and cumbersome underclass despised by all as they are now ( hence the regular reference on here to the ‘chav’)
No amount of political interference can change this, the only redemption lies in some kind of rebirth of ‘proper industry’ .

Proper industry,

Like the steel industry sold to India,

cars industry sold to China and india,

Leyland truck and bus sold to Volvo,

British rail engineering , sold to various owners and disbanded.

and lots more, we have lost a lot of enginnering skills,but have thousands of media type, and x factor contestnats, we need to spend and develop lots of brownfield sites for industry,creating a Made in the UK brand that we where once proud of.

Sadly until recently engineering /construction was seen as what dads did along time ago, before they got a suit and went to work in a suit.

Proper industry,

Like steel sold to India,

cars sold to China and india,

Leyland truck and bus sold to Volvo,
Have you been sleeping through all the “Where can I buy the cheapest…?” threads?
Manufacturers are only supplying the need created by the customers, us. Change the mentality of the consumer, dont blame the manufacturer.

look at how the german economy is structured– still seems to be doing ok …for now… a crisis of capitalism affects all who are involved, some more than others, and uk plc is a sick patient…

rudebwoy – Member
ah the logic of the right–blame the poor !

The problem with the poor is that they are not poor enough to be employable.

I say bring the minimum wage down to 50p an hour. Job sorted. No holes in that logic, none at all!

pay em in pizzas’

cars industry sold to China and india,

I used to work for a company called Wallon, storage and PDI depot mainly holding Rovers.

The reason the native British car industry died is because they kept producing rubbish. No one is going to buy the car that doesn’t start in the morning. Unless your Italian, but that was different.

Anyone driven a City Rover?

I wasn’t blaming anybody, low / no skill jobs have largely been automated / outsourced and some people have lost the work ethic for a variety of reasons, often related to the social environment the live in.

Don’t think political orientation comes into it, governments of both persuasions have got us to this point in conjunction with changes to industry and globalisation. Accepting how things actually are is the first step to improving them, or you could continue to live in denial like many on the extremes of the Left do if that makes you more comfortable. Of course it’s all the managers and fat cats at fault, keeping the good working people of the country under the yoke. That’s about as helpful as the extreme Right blaming everything on the working class / immigrents.

piemonster– was that rubbish down to the people on the line, or the lack of investment , poor management and greedy shareholders

stumpyjon, we have only had govts that want to appease capitalists, lab, tory, shower in now, all proclaim that they will be more ‘efficient’ for the buckmonsters –i wish to see the thing turned on its head, then buried in a deep pit–not reformist crap that keeps screwing the vast majority of the human race.

piemonster– was that rubbish down to the people on the line, or the lack of investment , poor management and greedy shareholders

Seem to recall a combination of all the above.

If you look at BMC, BL in particular you had a vast array of models. None of which had enough money to be done properly.

The Japanese turn up, but with just a handful of well funded, well designed models.

Just for fun, strong Unions made it difficult to close factories and focus resources on fewer models. Although of course, the market sorted those out sooner or later.

By the time Rover Group got itself to a point where they had a sensible number of models there was never enough money to make the investment needed. Even BMW came to that conclusion, with the obvious exception of the Mini.

Those at Longbridge worked damned hard, as I suspect many did under BMC/BL. But without the money to make a good (reliable) car, you gonna get stuffed sooner or later.

I know it’s slack but….

Here’s a copy and paste from Wiki

Competing models
In some cases, British Leyland continued to produce competing models from the merged companies at different sites for many years. However, any benefits from the broader number of models were far outweighed by higher development costs and greatly reduced economies of scale.
Sadly, potential benefits associated with rationalising parts usage were lost, as for example, the company made two completely different 1.3-litre engines (BMC A series and the Triumph 1.3-litre), two different 1.5-litre engines (BMC E series and Triumph), four different 2-litre engines (4-cylinder O series, 4-cylinder Triumph Dolomite, 4-cylinder Rover and 6-cylinder Triumph) and two completely different V8 engines (Triumph OHC 3-litre V8 and Rover 3.5-litre V8).
Examples of competing cars were:
Morris Minor and Austin A40/Austin 1100
Austin 1300 and Triumph Herald/Triumph Toledo
Morris Marina, Austin Allegro, and Triumph Dolomite
Triumph 2000, Rover 2000, and Austin Princess
Triumph Spitfire, MG Midget and Austin-Healey Sprite
Triumph TR6/Triumph TR7 and MG MGB
Rover 3500 and Jaguar XJ6

if you look at saab in sweden, cars are excellent, last too long though, can’t compete with the cheaper sourced vehicles from elsewhere– its all pretty short sighted 😡

Did I hear that Saabs R+D and build costs where as a rule, frighteningly high?

they may have been, but surely the employment and all monies thereof are spent in the swedish economy, not as per rent a shed employers who suck most of it out

http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/industry/saab-return-next-year

piemonster, but michael edwards got apointed and culled a load of the above cars,he also closed the tr7 factory in speke a quite modern factory , just
to teach the unions he was boss.

He did, and what was left when he’d finished?

It certainly wasn’t a big fat pot of money for turning the SD1 into a well built car.

Come to think of it, the UK in general was lacking in cash during his time.

Ive just remembered the Mini Metro

shudders

and the maestro which i had 2 and the ital of which i had 3 and another borrowed for a few weeks, great cars and vans for me.

then there was the rover 75 that i almost bought a week before rover went bust.

Then we had the Leyland National, some still running now, the Titan,and Lynx.

The SDI, was sold more on looks than spirit of its driving sadly.

Great days of classic design.

leyland DAF vans –a cross between a tractor and a barge