My article for this week's Herald and Post looks at how the government is helping people return to work....
Business East Hampshire is an important initiative from the District Council which brings local firms together to address business challenges. The latest session, last Friday, was about finding and recruiting staff.
Actually, finding and attracting the right staff in the right numbers has been the top issue that local employers have reported to me, ever since I have been the local MP, and indeed before. More recently it has become a much bigger issue nationwide.
Unemployment is defined as people who are not in work, but are looking for work, and would be ready to start a job in the next fortnight. At around four percent it is remarkably low by historic standards. Our own rate in East Hampshire is lower still.
But not everyone of working age who is not working is ‘unemployed’. While there are about 1.3m adults unemployed, there are several times that number who, for one reason or another, are not in a job.
A big chunk of these are in full-time education. There are also 1.6 million full time parents or homemakers, and 1.1 million early retirees. Around 32,000 report not looking for work because they believe there are no jobs available. And there’s a surprisingly large category – a million – in the category of ‘other’ economically inactive.
But the category which has gained most attention of late is people who are not seeking work because of long-term sickness or disability.
Of course there have always been people who because of a medical condition or disability have been unable, or greatly restricted in their ability, to work.
Over the years and decades, we have also seen great advances in assistive technology, and regulation around accessibility and inclusion. The structure of the economy now is much less about manual labour, with a larger technical and services sector, and more office work. In short, there should be more jobs than ever that are open to more people than ever.
In fact, there have been many people with disabilities who have found jobs and careers in the huge growth in employment we have seen since 2012. Between then and 2019, the number of people of working age but out of the labour market through long-term sickness or disability was lower than it had been for the previous two decades.
But since 2019, the number has risen again, by half a million. The trend started just before the pandemic, but continued through it, with higher relative increases for younger people and some particular sectors, like retail.
By type of condition, the biggest increases have been in musculoskeletal (such as bad back), mental health conditions, and a broad category of ‘other conditions’. Understanding fully the causal factors, and what can be done to help, is a big focus for government, and the NHS.
It matters a lot for those individuals, of course, but also for the whole economy and our society — because half a million people is a huge impact on the labour market, at a time of already very low unemployment.
Alongside this focus, the government is also seeking to do more to help families with the cost of childcare – another key factor which can be an impediment to working for those who want to.
Everyone knows about the universal early years education for three and four year olds during term, but some of the other sources of help are less well known. It’s worth a look at gov.uk to see what you may be entitled to.
For lower-income families, Universal Credit already offers up to 85 percent reimbursement of other childcare costs, a higher rate than was available under Tax Credits. Now, from last week, the maximum ceiling for this is rising by almost half, to to £951 for one child and £1,630 for two or more children.
This kind of support is really important for families, but the other side of the coin is employers’ recruitment, ensuring they’re offering the jobs and the right structures that work for families.
Firms are thinking differently about how to maximise the talent they can access, to help their businesses grow. At the Business East Hampshire event I talked about seven different groups of people that local companies can look towards to help fill their vacancies. I’ll come back to these in this column.
