The funny side of job statistics
The biggest companies are not recruiting and unemployment is rising, but after taking a look online, comedian Dave Cohen suspects there’s more to the figures than meets the eye
The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) tell a familiar story – unemployment is at its highest level for 12 years, up by 232,000 for the three months to April. Job vacancies, which peaked a year-and-a-half ago at 700,000, were down to 444,000 in May.
It’s grim, grim, grim, wherever you look. But hang on a minute – 444,000 vacancies, 232,000 job losses?
Forgive me for sounding like an idiot (I’m a comedian, that’s a CV requirement). I know not every job gets filled straight away, some are seasonal, the rest are given to Peter Mandelson: but why doesn’t unemployment fall by 212,000 a month? “It is a net figure,” explains David Bradbury of the ONS, with the patience of a man who has been asked this sort of question by ignorant journos before. “So if 520,000 lose their jobs and claim benefit in a month, and 444,000 find work, that’s still 76,000 without a job.”
It’s easy to believe things are, indeed, as bad as they sound. In the latest issue of my local paper, virtually the only non-government job is for “self-employed debt collector”. Monday’s 144-page Loot offered less than a page of jobs – and it probably hasn’t escaped your notice that this section of the Guardian has shrunk at almost exactly the same pace as the economy.
Unemployment is simple to measure accurately – every new benefit claim adds one to the statistics, just as every new job takes one away.
Measuring vacancies, though, is a much vaguer science, based on monthly recruitment policies of 6,000 companies. That sounds like a lot, until you realise there are more than 2m firms in the UK. Bradbury assures me the figures are an accurate reflection – the largest businesses are included, and they are updated every 15 months. Yet doesn’t 444,000 vacancies sound like there’s still a lot of activity? Jobcentres alone took 5,000 recruits last year, and will employ another 10,000, although I may be missing the point here.
You’re probably wondering why the Guardian has entrusted this topic to the world’s most averagely-successful stand-up comic. I’ve been freelance and self-employed since 1983: for years I was a curiosity at parties, the bloke who got up in the afternoon and went to the pub to work. Nowadays, I take whatever’s going – a gig here, TV gag-writing there, and journalism, specifically, here. We bits-and-pieces self-employed types are now among the fastest-growing group in the economy. I’m no longer a novelty, I am work’s Face of the Future.
At my local Jobcentre there were 300 new jobs advertised on the day I visited. A quick browse revealed some interesting facts: for instance, each of those sweet-faced young students who greets you in the street, whose happiness depends on you purchasing a standing order for Greenpeace, is earning £8 an hour. It almost makes me want to take to the streets to give those poor, unloved kids a rise.
The most popular job advertised was “solar panel expert”. On further inspection, the company was Everest. I’m guessing that “solar panel expert” is more exciting than “door-to-door salesman”. A spokesman for the company confirmed that this is not some kind of born-again conversion from windows to roofs, and that double-glazing will continue to be their raison d’etre. Still, at least they’re recruiting, and recruiting heavily, unlike most firms at the moment.
This is the first recession since the internet boom, which has a number of implications. Like everything to do with the net there are pros and cons. Every vacancy offered to a Jobcentre goes online. And every local Jobcentre website is updated every five minutes. So you don’t even need to go in.
It isn’t just Jobcentres. Hundreds of recruitment agencies have sprung up on the web, and although business has slowed they’re still reporting activity.
Here’s one business that’s clearly booming: if you want to attract people, set up an online job recruitment service. I could have spent hours, or days, looking up every job. (Internet bad thing: unlimited opportunity for displacement activity.)
Stephen Pink of Ecom Recruitment is gaining many new clients, especially those offering work in online publishing. (Internet good thing: there is definitely a boom in job availability online.) “We’re being asked to find people to work online, in digital industries, and there are loads more jobs in mobile phone technology. In the coming years, you’ll see phenomenal changes to your phones. A few candidates are ahead of the game and they’re finding work. Companies are being very picky, also they’re not training so much.”
Stephen’s message is clear – if you want to make yourself more employable, you should learn more about the internet. (Internet good thing – age is less relevant than online skills. Internet bad thing – computer-illiterate oldies like me will need to work harder to learn those skills.)
So is the ONS really up to speed? Stephen Pink says there’s been a huge drop in recruitment from the biggest companies. But thanks to the smaller online businesses, jobs have not completely dried up.
Many of the ONS’s sample of 6,000 firms come from the largest companies, some of whom have suffered more than most from the recession.
Brent Jenkins set up his own Vale Web Designs in Milton Keynes just over a year ago, and has four full-time staff and several more on a freelance basis. “The first website design companies have become too big, they’re overcharging and not always doing a good job,” he said. “I thought I could set up on my own and do the job better, more efficiently, and at a profit. It’s impossible to find someone who has done everything on the web.
“You can find some people with certain skills. The internet is always changing. Our firm is about finding new ways of doing things.
“Many smaller businesses are starting up in the same way. And now a lot of the larger firms are dealing with companies like ours,” he added – while the baby crying in the background added to the sense that he’s working in a different way from what’s accepted.
In the 80s, we grew accustomed to twisted statistics which proved that despite the deliberate dismantling of manufacturing and mining, there were actually only three people on the dole, two of whom were workshy scroungers. This recession, have we gone too far the other way?
I’m not an expert. And this is a snapshot, not necessarily an accurate reflection. But I’m building an impression that, while there are private sector jobs, people from older industries are not retraining fast enough to pick them up. The West Midlands has been hit hardest – Birmingham, Sandwell and Wolverhampton are among the top five unemployment blackspots.
Using the internet (again), I did a quick search for job vacancies in Wolverhampton. I checked how many were on offer for the traditional workforces – construction, engineering and motoring. I’d trawled through about 60 before finding anything remotely applicable – a small engineering parts manufacturer, offering £8-9 an hour, three months only.
I called a Black County recruitment agency and asked if they were getting many traditional jobs. “Not really,” the man on the phone said. Are most of your CVs from people in those industries? “Afraid so.” Were they retraining quick enough for the jobs coming up? “Afraid not.” You sound pretty down. “No, that’s just my accent.”
Clearly this recession is far worse for the carmaker from Wolverhampton than for the web designer in Milton Keynes. Claire McCartney of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (who actually is an expert), thinks there has been a tendency by the media to focus on the negative.
“Obviously work habits can’t be changed overnight. But big companies are still looking. Top of everybody’s list is “transferable skills”. How do you demonstrate that? You need to show flexibility in previous work.”
She envisages “an economy made up of more small companies, though it is likely to be healthier than one that relies on larger companies … although, of course, more smaller companies means fewer pension schemes and sick leave, poorer union representation.”
Welcome to my world.
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