Surely the easiest way to help people get back into work is to get them to take courses which will result in useful qualifications. I do not see how forcing them into doing the work of people on community service is going to help anyone get motivated.

If they are going ahead with this plan, why not just make these into proper jobs and pay them properly? Surely nobody in their right mind is going to accept doing physical work for just over £2 an hour.

This begs the question. What is a “long term claimant”? Put simply is unemployment as a result of disability treated the same as unemployment which has been caused by some other reason?

If I may be more precise let me put it as follows. If you have been claiming Incapacity Benefit and you are shifted first onto Employment Support Allowance and then Job Seekers Allowance are you counted as a new claimant of JSA or are your previous periods on disablity benefist taken into account?

A further point – many benefit claimants already do voluntary work. Some have long-standing commitments and they perform useful roles for charities and other third sector organisations and public sector organisations.

Are these community work programmes going to be flexible enough to take into account the patterns of work established by existing claimaints? Are new claimants going to be offered the chance to perform these more challenging roles? They would be gaining skills recognised by employers. Or are these community work programmes simply going to be punitive in nature. How is that going to help employers?

The evidence in the mental health sector is that it is best to devote only a short period to pre-employment preparation. Ideally you want to move on quickly to helping the individual gain a job that they would like to do. That of course is harder in times of high unemployment but from the individual’s perspective it is best to get them working quickly in a job that they can do without too much training.

Spending long periods doing work that is meaningless to you will demoralises even the fittest of us and it is morale killer for people with mental health problems. Giving people a chance to succeed early through work is a big incentive and the best way of doing that is to help people get proper jobs.

The Councils cut the services, those made unemployed will then find themselves doing their old jobs – but not getting paid for it! Bloody Tories!

Is it me or is James Purnell still hanging out at the DWP

“remind them what it is like to maintain “habits and routines” of working life, they will have to undertake “mandatory work activity” of at least 30 hours a week for a four-week period.”

A truly excellent idea. Comes straight from the reasoning of Richard Layard.

Here’s a report of his from 2001.

http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/occasional/OP015.pdf

“These ideas make one focus on the intense need which many unemployed people have for
active help to overcome the barriers to employment. The main kinds of “active labour market
policies” that can be used are these:
• Job-search assistance, advice and matching to the available vacancies. Good
controlled experiments in Sweden show how unemployment has been reduced in
areas where the job centres have more staff.
• Training. This has a mixed record but the right education and training can clearly
set a person on a new path in life.
• Employment subsidies. These can induce employers to give a chance to hard-toplace
workers and thus expand the size of the effective workforce. A good
example is the Jobstart programme in Australia.
• Work experience. Where no job can be found with a regular employer, work on
publicly-useful projects can help improve people’s work habits and give them
work records which help in finding regular jobs.
These programmes can help and have been around for a long time, though usually on
a small scale. But unless they are universal, they tend to be used by people who already had
the best chance of finding work.
Thus the big new idea in Labour’s New Deal is this. We ought to offer everybody
on the threshold of long-term unemployment a choice of activity for at least a period.
And when that happens we should remove the option of life on benefit.”

Richard Layard is the UK’s premier labour economist and a Labour Peer. This is hardly just teh bastard Tories sticking it to the poor you know.

This is not new, like most of the Tories’ policies its just New Labour turned up to 11 and with an even greater emphasis on punishment and hard work. As this bunch of morons are so keen on shifting the sick and disabled to unemployment beneifts they’ll soon be forced to do manual labour which should be interesting. Even forcing the terminally unfit to suddenly start doing manual work sounds like a splendid way to increase heart attacks, or maybe that’s what they’re aiming for. In any case who wants their services provided by people with severe mental problems, those incubating a feeling of furious resentment or just the downright strange. There’s more than enough of that from those actually paid to do jobs these days thanks to low wages and lousy conditions.

OP Point 1: You betcha. IDS is very enamoured of American workfare, completely ignoring the New York example which cost 20000 low paid workers their jobs and actually saw some placed in jobs they’d been doing for pay. Already the “training” placements are menial posts in Poundland and Asda for which agencies like A4E profit. It would be a great idea to provide the long term unemployed with a month’s work experience if it paid them the wage for the job. That might help them regain the dignity Danny “Mole Rat” Alexander used as his justification

Just because IDS went on safari north of the M25 and once met some poor people he thinks this qualifies him as a great expert. Alright, by Tory standards it does but it can’t disguise the fact that the man is an utter buffoon as his own party thought when he was leader. His think tank takes money from exploiters of the poor Cash Converters among others.

I wonder what crime you have to commit these days to be sentenced to 120-160 hours of Community Service?

We know that adult social care will take a huge battering in the next few years. To you and I that means your elderly neighbours and relatives will not have a home help, will not have transport to a day centre. These are essential services but they will be cut or the charges that councils impose now will be hiked up to the point that many service users will not be able to afford them. The elderly and disabled will be home bound and unable to survive at home.

After a few months of these cuts there will be a public outcry, but the Conservative government (ferfucksake, that is what they are, why cant people drop this term “coalition”?). Then a brand spanking new “social enterprise” will “volunteer” to help out. (Take heed, there will be lots of these starting up in the next year or so.) The “social enterprise” will have some start up money from the government, and probably get some “charity” income in the form of a donation from a business (look carefully, will they be one of Osborne’s 35 mates?). Of course, such a “social enterprise” will need someone to do the work. Enter DWP with their “volunteers”.

They will be doing work with a social purpose. They will do that work with “volunteers” (well, compulsory recruited “volunteers”). Taxpayers will be paying less for these “services” than if the public sector were providing them and crucially, have no responsibility if the “social enterprise” goes out of business, and no responsibility if the board of the “social enterprise” pays themselves a king’s ransom for doing fuckall. There will be lots here for Conservatives to applaud. It will be dressed up in a way that will make it acceptable for the moderates from the centre ground, And if aanyone complains there is always that favourite “we inherited a mess from Labour…” along with “we have no choice because of this deficit of unimaginable and completely made up size…”

Welcome to the Big Society.

Hi – I’m back after being a guest of the NHS.

Simple question: How do those who suppose the long-term unemployed are afflicted by an aversion to work account for this cyclical variation in business investment spending in the EU countries taken together?
http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_PUBLIC/2-28102010-BP/EN/2-28102010-BP-EN.PDF

Given the higher current unemployment rates prevailing in EU countries – as well as in the US – compared with, say, two years ago, do they suppose there is some sort of unexpected international epidemic of aversion to work which can only be remedied by coercion and sanctions?

@2

The Councils cut the services, those made unemployed will then find themselves doing their old jobs – but not getting paid for it!

But the private entities and charities that parcel the work out will be recompensed for services rendered, of that you can be sure.

You’ve got to admit, as a way of getting around the minimum wage it’s a hell of a wheeze…

@9

Spot on. The gvmt can’t attack the minimum wage directly much as they’d love to abolish it so this £2 p/h proposal has been dreamt up by some callous bastard with no experience of unemployment whatsoever.

“How do those who suppose the long-term unemployed are afflicted by an aversion to work account for this cyclical variation in business investment spending in the EU countries taken together?”

Aversion to work isn’t the argument used. Disconnection from work is. And from both sides. The workers get out of the habits of work. And perhaps more importantly, employers get into hte habit of binning job applications from the long term unemployed.

This is again, very much Richard Layard’s view: that after you’ve been out of work for some length of time (a year, maybe more) then you’re essentially disconnected from the labour market altogether.

Worth noting that the Nobel was awarded (in part) to Chris Pissarides who takes very much the same view (not surprisingly, as he’s at the LSE as well and influenced by Layard).

Long term unemployment is different from short term.

I’m unemployed I suppose, although I’m a temp worker and take work whenever the agencies can offer it. I’ve worked full-time hours for the past 8 weeks but have no work lined up this week so will need to sign on again to make ends meet.

My problem with this plan is that 30 hours of “voluntary” work (how can it be voluntary when you’re made to do it?) is a lot of time – time that when I am out of work, I spend looking for permanent or longer-term temp work and applying for it. I can be online, job seeking, from 8-8 most days. So having a large tranche of my time taken up with working for free is going to seriously restrict the amount of applications I can make – lessening my chances of getting real work!

And what happens if I get a call about a temp job at 8am (as does often happen) but am lined up to be at the volunteer job that day?

I agree with Richard – I can certainly see this being used to provide free labour to keep essential services going, under the guise of budget cuts.

Hang on a minute. Weren’t we told that the private sector could conjure up the 1.6 million jobs required to take up the slack caused by the wholesale destruction of the public sector last week? Now we are told that we need a form of forced labour to create ‘work’ for the underclass. Which is it? Either there is work for these people or there is not. If there is a shortage of labour out there then I, for one, have seen scant evidence for it. I see wage rates kept flat and a rise in casual/part time work, hardly consistent with a labour shortage. Now we are being expected to swallow this despicable proposal.

If there are jobs out there needing done then why not simply employ people to do them? If we need litter picked up or schools repainted, why not actually employ people to do it? Why is that concept so difficult to understand for your average Tory.

Let us get something straight here; there is no point in tackling the Sub human Tories on this. They are among the nastiest pieces of filth who inhabit this Island, but surely to fuck there are still some decent Lib-Dems among the appeasers who feel uncomfortable with the concept of ousting people from the labour market and replacing them with a source of un-paid labour. A source incidentally, that the bastards where directly responsible for creating?

Oddly enough I see this whole policy in a different light. All the coalition appear to be doing is separating the difference between those who ‘cant work’ and those who ‘wont work’ Reasonable in my view.

Looking at the 5 main questions in order;

1 That would amount to constructive dismissal – illegal.
2 Training is mandatory. Not to provide it and safety wear would also be illegal.
2a Training by trainers may not be required – On Job Training by experienced staff.
3 As you say “one assumes” ?
4 No idea on the availability of jobs in their areas. That I suspect is where ‘social mobility’ will kick in.

It’s all a bit on the scaremonger side isn’t it ? Personally, I’ve just moved (with family) where the work has been since the 70s and it’s done me no harm whatsoever. Indeed, new opportunities opened up at each move.

There of course lies the rub of it all, 13 years of Labour government has almost completely destroyed our human will to improve ourselves. For that reason only, I believe the policy will fail and crime will rise at an alarming rate due to a previously unidentifiable number of feckless wasters who will find life a lot easier in prison.

@9

absolutely – this, as has been pointed out above and many times before, is exactly what the ‘big society’ is, a structural change to move the care and provision of services away from public control and accountability and into the arms of the ‘efficient’ private sector. I reckon it starts off now being a year’s unemployment, then this period of time diminishes until it’s a month.

@11: “Aversion to work isn’t the argument used. Disconnection from work is.”

But why then does “disconnection from work” go in cycles apparently afflicting many countries at about the same time?

Granted that in 2006 Tony Blair and his ministers believed 1m recipients of unemployment benefit could be moved into work, we still have the issue of explaining why it is that unemployment rates in so many countries are currently so much higher now than they were then:

“Work and Pensions Secretary John Hutton has unveiled plans to get one million incapacity benefit claimants back into work, saving £7bn a year.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4641588.stm

tim W @ 11

And perhaps more importantly, employers get into hte habit of binning job applications from the long term unemployed.

Surely they can only ‘get in the habit’ of binning applications because there is a huge surplus of labour? Even a blind man reading this via Braille using a hook can see that the only solution is to get to a situation where there is a shortage of labour? That way the private sector will be forced to train ant then retain people. Of course once we come close to anything like a tight labour market, the Tories driven by their capitalist masters will force a cut in demand and fuel unemployment?

The reality is that the private sector fears full employment and will never allow it. What is worse IDS knows this and his forced labour policy is nothing more than a sop to the nastier, venal elements of the Tory Party.

Ted @ 14

All the coalition appear to be doing is separating the difference between those who ‘cant work’ and those who ‘wont work’ Reasonable in my view.

Surely it can only be ‘reasonable’ if there are jobs for those that cohort of the population who ‘wont work’ to go into?

Attempting to separate the unemployed into distinct groups, those who wish to work, but cannot find any (A) and those who have no wish to work, irrespective of whether or not there is work for them (B) seems rather pointless, given that we cannot find enough work for Group A.

Only an idiot of the first water would suggest we deny those people in group A work in order to force group B into the labour force.

There of course lies the rub of it all, 13 years of Labour government has almost completely destroyed our human will to improve ourselves.

Fucking bollocks!!!!!

“Surely they can only ‘get in the habit’ of binning applications because there is a huge surplus of labour? Even a blind man reading this via Braille using a hook can see that the only solution is to get to a situation where there is a shortage of labour? That way the private sector will be forced to train ant then retain people. Of course once we come close to anything like a tight labour market, the Tories driven by their capitalist masters will force a cut in demand and fuel unemployment?”

This is the very background to Layard’s work. Think Marx for a moment, that reserve army of the unemployed. This is what keeps wage inflation down, absolutely correct.

However, what Layard has pointed out is that the long term unemployed aren’t really part of the labour force at all. Partly it’s because they are so dispirited at being unable to find work that they stop. Partly it’s because some do indeed make the choice to live upon benefits (yes, we do all know someone who has made that choice). Prtly because employers don’t see them as being part of the labour force.

So, the solution is to use both carrot and stick (Layard’s words, not mine) to get these people who aren’t part of the labour force back into it.

And yes, absolutely, the point is indeed to get to where there is a shortage of labour so that training, wages and all the rest then rise. But, and this is a very important but, if you’ve a lot of long term unemployed who aren’t part of the wider labour market then this wage inflation happens when all of the short term unemployed are picked up in the cyclical upswing. You can end up (as this country has many a time) with almost no short term unemployment at all, a very tight labour market, wages rising and threatening inflation: but you’ve still got a million or more long term unemployed.

This is exactly the problem that Layard has been trying to solve with all the welfare to work schemes and the rest. How to get those outside the labour market back into it.

In short, how to solve structural long term unemployment.

Tim Worstall thinks it’s a “truly excellent idea” ergo this is a very bad idea.

He namechecks some LSE academic, this has fuck all to do with an LSE academic who’s probably never done a hard day’s graft in his pampered life.

These are the ideas of Americans Lawrence Mead and Charles Murray the latter says “”In America we have got the underclass off the public agenda” what do you suppose he means by that? Because we all know in America the underclass is still there, we saw it after Hurrican Katrina when we saw what lay underneath America’s dirty carpet.

This has nothing to do with “helping people back into work” and a lot to do with creating a low paid, cowed workforce scared to death of challenging their bosses because unemployment means destitution.

Workfare has finally arrived in the UK. IDS is one key player here, but watch out for “two-brains” (neither of which work properly) Willets; someone who is very keen on the ideas of Mead et al. Still, it will create another layer of bureaucracy (private agencies) staffed by the worst kind of petit-bourgeois scum, like Tim Worstall. Happy days…

@14

13 years of Labour government has almost completely destroyed our human will to improve ourselves

What utter guff.

And presumptuous too. If you could afford to move your entire family to follow work it makes you a lot more fortunate than you seem to believe.

It’s a simple numbers game – when the manufacturing base of the UK contracted in the ’80s and ’90s a significant number of jobs went the way of the dodo, replaced in some part by lower-wage service industry jobs that were less secure but in the main not replaced at all. Private industry has spent the last 30 years rewarding executives and investors handsomely for paring down their workforce year-on-year, and New Labour’s solution was to ramp up the public sector to try and compensate – but still, large swathes of the country ended up with little in the way of employment and what foiled the Randian theorists was that the proles in that position didn’t “do the decent thing”, stop reproducing and quietly die off.

The rich have no respect for anyone without a shopping agenda.

I think this is a marvellous idea, although it might be necessary to provide shackles and a ball-and-chain to make sure the slaves, er, “volunteers” don’t get away from their station.

“He namechecks some LSE academic, this has fuck all to do with an LSE academic who’s probably never done a hard day’s graft in his pampered life.”

That is why the labour economist (ie, economist of the labour market) was made Lord Layard by Tony Blair: for his work into the effects and solutions to long term unemployment.

Suddenly the benefit trap is no longer a political reality and the unemployed are considered workshy. Ho hum!

IDS seemed to be on a voyage towards the truth but now ideology has stepped in. While there may be a few polyester encased Burberry enthusiasts who would rather not work I think most people would rather have a decent income and some self-respect. One has to therefore ask why they remain out of work.

Why does no government seem to want to put the necessary resources into the most needy parts of the country? It’s simply not reasonable to keep on repeating Tebbit about biking around for work when there aren’t the jobs anyway.

Let’s also consider the plight of carers and single parents who would need to walk into jobs paying about £18k in some parts of the country before they could consider stopping claiming. Often they have not been able to work for a number of years due to their responsibilities.

Tim Worstall spouts his Panglossian ideas without reference to the situation many long-term unemployed find themselves in or the complete lack of funding the Tories will put into any scheme compared with what might actually make any difference.

Tim @ 19

This is exactly the problem that Layard has been trying to solve with all the welfare to work schemes and the rest. How to get those outside the labour market back into it.

Perhaps Tim, but IDS et al schemes are not likely to change that, are they? They are destined to fail on so many because ‘workfare’ addresses none of those concerns.

If these people are given tasks that are clearly ‘makework’ then the private sector will easily be able to identify that. Remember, we are talking about 1.6 million people being shoved onto these schemes and such ‘jobs’ will, by definition, be valueless to the private sector. Instead of 1.6 million ‘useless people’ (in private sector terms) with worthless CVs, we will have 1.6 million ‘useless people’ with worthless CVs, albeit with various government workfare schemes on it. I can see no reason why such people become more valuable to potential employers whilst there is a surplus of labour.

People who are now being coerced into ‘slave labour’ are not going to be invigorated to employment by this; they are still going to feel (rightly or wrongly) exploited.

If, by some miracle, you manage to truly upskill 1.6 million so far unemployable people and (re)-instil the work ethic into them, surely the ‘best’ you will do either displace or undermine those already working in the labour market? Given that we already have a surplus of labour at the moment, no-one has suggested where these people will find work. So what is going to happen to all these supposed newly equipped workers? All we are going to have are millions of highly motivated people looking for non-existent work. Not exactly a position known for causing harmony, is it?

Hey but tdon’t be too harsh on IDS. Like his LibDem partners will be delighted to tell you *put broken record on*:
a) Labour left a black hole;
b) at least you’ll be able to vote for AV…

Amen

Tim @ 23

That is why the labour economist (ie, economist of the labour market) was made Lord Layard by Tony Blair: for his work into the effects and solutions to long term unemployment.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement though Tim. A nasty piece of work being knighted by another piece of filth.

Won’t there be a lot of competition for these menial tasks? First, the Big Society is supposed to be providing volunteers eager to do them. Then the criminal justice system is supposed to assign them as an alternative to prison. And now the jobless are to be forced to do them as well. Of course the right wing media are delighted at this, doubtless because it amounts to criminalising being unemployed and receiving the tax money of “decent, hard working folk” in benefit. Will they be required to wear a uniform too?

@29

Probably a hi-vis orange jacket with “SCROUNGER REHAB” in bold block capitals…

*dark, weary, humourless chuckle*

I remember registering with a temp agency for low-paid work in an area of high unemployment. I was never out of work for more than a week. I certainly spent more than 80% of my time in work.

So I view the “long term unemployed” with some suspicion.

@30

Would the wages you earned from that temp work have supported a family? The very fact that it was temp work suggests that it offered little in the way of stability and long-term prospects.

Such things are considered ephemera in the world of economic theory, but they are critical to attaining a degree of happiness for many people.

@ 21 bluepillnation

Wrong on both assumptions, did it on bank loans and extended mortgages. That’s why I sought out every opportunity to pay down the debt as quickly as possible.

Your analysis of it as a “simple numbers game” may well be true, I just ignored all that and ploughed on.

@30

the comment immediately after yours (bluepillnation) nails it – temp work of the kind you are talking about it is ephemeral, poorly paid and subject to immediate availability. What if you are unemployed and have a family to support? Temp wages do not cover a family’s needs.

When are you meant to be looking for permanent work? In the time between you putting the kids to bed and you falling asleep, exhausted, at the computer?

When you are young and have no dependents, getting a call to come in the next morning to work for a week is no problem. You don’t need to sort out childcare or arrange to have the kids picked up from school. Having a long term, permanent contract allows you to sort these things out. Week long contracts are so erratic and difficult to work with they are impractical for people with families or friends/relatives they care for.

@32

But that implies you had a mortgage in the first place, without which the mortgage itself could not be extended and the banks would have been very unlikely to advance you a loan.

Disagree all you want, but I feel my point stands.

Oh and from the nation that brought us this idea:

‘Wisconsin ‘workfare’ a total failure report finds

-W2 [workfare] is “a Frankenstein of a social program and is “the $1.5 billion mistake of a welfare program unleashed on thousands of poor people in Milwaukee and Wisconsin that drove single women with children off the rolls to fend for themselves in a declining economy

http://richmond.indymedia.org/newswire/display/10473/index.php

“If these people are given tasks that are clearly ‘makework’ then the private sector will easily be able to identify that. Remember, we are talking about 1.6 million people being shoved onto these schemes and such ‘jobs’ will, by definition, be valueless to the private sector. Instead of 1.6 million ‘useless people’ (in private sector terms) with worthless CVs, we will have 1.6 million ‘useless people’ with worthless CVs, albeit with various government workfare schemes on it. I can see no reason why such people become more valuable to potential employers whilst there is a surplus of labour.”

Because, as Layard continually tries to point out, it’s the very fact that people have been out of contact with the labour market which makes them less than desirable employble.

“A nasty piece of work being knighted by another piece of filth.”

No, ennobled, not knighted. He became a peer, a Lord, not a Sir, a knight.

A 2008 comparative review of workfare programmes concluded that they are ineffective in getting people back into full employment.

http://research.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd5/rports2007-2008/rrep533.pdf

@36

But what Layard doesn’t seem to take into account is that no matter how many welfare-to-work programmes exist – if the jobs are not there at the end then all they are doing is providing a pool of labour that is not regulated by things like the minimum wage and as such can be used as cheap labour – which will no doubt enhance corporate profits and with dividends for the management, shareholders and investors of the private agencies that provide the service – but will do nothing for the prospects or happiness of the people coerced or forced onto the workfare treadmill.

Tim @ 36

Because, as Layard continually tries to point out, it’s the very fact that people have been out of contact with the labour market which makes them less than desirable employble.

The point is that they are out of ‘contact with the labour market’ for a reason. It may be one of any number of reasons, from simply deemed ‘too old’, ‘too young’, ‘too unskilled’, unqualified, too sick or any other reason we care to mention. No matter the reason, the market has spoken for many of them. The fact remains that if they are not what ‘the market needs’ then they are surplus to the market and adding an entry onto your CV that has ‘compulsory government scheme’ written all over it will not make them more employable.

In fact, I could easily be persuaded that in the same way that juries are made up of people thought of as ‘too stupid to avoid jury duty’, the ‘graduates’ of these schemes will be deemed ‘people so unemployable, they were put on workfare’ and employers will avoid such people like the plague, especially if there are unlimited people with real labour-force experience looking for work. You could bury a thousand or so empty CVs in this manner, but one and a half million? No chance and we both know it.

None of that will really matter, of course, because none of the actual aims of workfare is about helping the unemployed find work. The Tories spent their last 18 years in throwing millions onto the dole and then millions more onto incapacity benefits. The real aims of Government are threefold:

1) Provide the gurning misanthropes among their own supporters a sense that the unemployed are being punished.
2) Provide their paymasters with a source of cheap labour, directly or indirectly.
3) But not least, to provide themselves with a source of cheap labour to undermine public services with.

Layard was describing an actual policy – the New Deal – and how it was implemented. He said there were four ways to proceed it offered – a subsidised job, education/training the voluntary sector, or an environmental project. In the last two you got benefits plus £15, in the second benefits. Currently if you refuse (in one example) you will be docked two weeks benefits (not 3 months).

This doesn’t sounds much like the IDS plan, although details are scarce.

So, to summarise this government’s un/employment policy

1) We’re about to throw between 500,000 and 1 mill of you on the dole.

2) You won’t even get that dole if you don’t clean shit off the streets. Along with the other 3 mill.

Do you ever get the impression they’re testing what they can get away with? Compulsory sterilisation and abortion for families earning under £20k?

Just watching the end of V for Vendetta again. Very inspiring.

I think it’s about time we unionised the unemployed.

@ 42: be interesting to see them withdrawing their labour, wouldn’t it?

@43 I’m thinking more along the lines of the ‘collective voice’ aspect of unions, particularly if these workfare-style proposals allow for exploitation of the unemployed, inadvertently or otherwise. The mission statement of this prospective union would be the only one in history that would look forward to its own dissolution! But such an organisation could help pinpoint whether the long-term unemployed are affected by an experience gap (their lack of work history makes it less likely to be offered work) or a skills gap (any work available requires skills/training which the unemployed do not have). If governments of any hue really do want to eradicate unemployment, then they must make available training for where there is a shortage of skills. The obvious problem is that such a scheme would be hugely expensive, so how could it be provided? What incentives could and should be available for the private sector to run in-house training?

If we make the unemployed more employable, won’t they just steal the jobs (that don’t exist) off hard-working Eastern Europeans. Lost-cost airlines could go out of business. Think it through FFS!

@42 and @43

There used to be an unemployed workers’ union http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Unemployed_Workers%27_Movement
and conditions are certainly ripe for a similar movement. I remember hearing something about stuff happening in Salford f’rinstance.