To think the current Government is either stupid or delusional in its expectations re "economically inactive" people?

[Juliette20]

news.sky.com/story/priti-patel-attacked-over-clueless-claim-that-inactive-britons-will-fill-job-vacancies-11937918

Apparently "economically inactive" people are the answer to the massive hole in the labour market being created by leaving the EU and Government immigration policies.

There are 8 million people who fall into this category. Ok. But:

• 26% of this group are disabled/long term sick.

• 22% are full time students

• 13% have taken early retirement

• 11% are people who have just left a job and are awaiting the results of job applications, or don't need to work

• Not sure how many people are carers for relatives- but other data suggests about 7 million people - some of these will be working as well, of course.

It leaves very few people, and people don't necessarily want short term work like fruit picking.

The unemployment rate is current 3 - 4%

Priti Patel, get real, your figures do not stack up.

I agree. There’s a whole world of difference between the categories of “economically inactive” people you listed and just plain unemployed.

I think they know this and are just patting their new voters on the head for now, pending a hasty “review” this time next year. Why the can’t just be realistic about what the labour market actually needs now is anybody’s guess. This just seems like time wasting.

yes, serious head-desk situation here. Students are studying. Disabled or long-term sick people would no doubt work if they could (many do). Early retirees have probably done all the work they want, and if they are self-funding then where's the problem?

Regrettably our years of cheap food and cheap goods need to stop. Time to pay real wages if we want people to do real work.

They are neither stupid nor delusional.
They will use it as a stick to beat those who refuse a great offer of a wonderful low-paid job vacated by an Eastern European.
Watch for Daily Mail articles about scroungers who refuse to move elsewhere to work. Stay at home Moms or close to retirement unemployed who don't see their careers in picking strawberries, being chambermaids in hotels etc. About how carers will have to become more expensive because the disabled non-driving benefits taking person next door doesn't want to become a carer.
Happy days ahead. It's not an accident. They have it all well calculated and sorted.

Yes, I do worry about that, Eerie. That they are preparing the ground for some kind of cheap forced labour.

Also, I know someone whose job it is to employ large numbers of seasonal people. He says it is impossible to recruit from the indigenous population-they've tried and continue to, but they simply can't get them. And any who do come are only there to get the dole office off their backs, and leave shortly afterwards. Or they piss about.

Probably doomed to fail.

However I have family member who worked in a supermarket on Saturday's then university holidays. Shop then decided they only wanted totally flexible staff and stopped bothering with local schoolkids, students and school hours mums.

Maybe they will revert to their former hiring flexibility?

I agree that they are wrong to think the inactive will fill the gaps. If the inactive were able and willing to work, they would already be doing so.

What's going to happen is that wages are going to have to rise. Consumers/taxpayers are going to have to pay more for the labour component of what they get, or do without. There will be fewer workers than there would have been without Brexit, so the less important jobs that would have been filled will now not exist.

She probably doesn't even believe what she's saying, it's just a partly-plausible fig-leaf to cover up the fact there's going to be a bit of adversity for employers. (For lower-paid British workers, it might be a benefit, as they will be more in demand.)

They will use it as a stick to beat those who refuse a great offer of a wonderful low-paid job vacated by an Eastern European.

This. And I imagine it will be certain sectors they go after. I'm ecomically inactive at the moment (sahm and a student). They have zero leverage over me. I inherited money, I'm married to a high earner and my rich inlaws throw money at us like they think Labour are going to get elected next week. They aren't going to put tax rates up and they aren't going to tax inheritance so I don't need to work. Don't get me wrong, I intend to. I should graduate with degree number 2 next year and I'm planning on doing a Social Work Masters after that but without guns being involved, I won't be picking fruit (apart from in my MiL's garden) any time soon.

The long term sick however... having worked for the DWP, I'd be rather concerned. They've always been a problem for Tory Governments.

Eerie is spot on. They want workhouses by a different name. This has been Conservative MO for centuries. These are the people who brought you Imperialism:What's Yours Is Ours, Slavery in the Americas, The Irish Famine, Victorian Workhouses and WWI: People Are Pawns.

If by full time students you mean university students then they have 3-4 months in the summer in which to work, and many do. Back in the day they were often fruit pickers in fact.

Regrettably our years of cheap food and cheap goods need to stop. Time to pay real wages if we want people to do real work.

That they are preparing the ground for some kind of cheap forced labour

My jaws on the floor here. It was fine to pay shitty wages when it was Eastern European’s doing these jobs, but now it’s going to have to be brits it outrageous. I thought slavery was abolished 200 years ago.

Patel, Truss, Kwarteng and Raab write a book called ‘Brittania Unchained’ stating that British workers are lazy and we should be working like the Chinese. Now they are in power, they will get to implement their ideas.

The ‘red wall’ and ‘left behind’ voters who thought these people were on their side are fucked. They’ll be bussed in to do seasonal work picking fruit and cleaning Patel’s hotel toilets.

and cleaning Patel’s hotel toilets.

And exactly who do you think should be cleaning said toilets then?

@Aposterhasnoname, how dare you compare slavery to minimum wage jobs? Nobody mentioned slavery. The minimum wage jobs require hard work but they are not being beaten, raped and murdered when trying to escape. The Eastern European’s moved here to do those jobs as they could make a lot of money relative to where they came from and could build big houses with their earnings back home.

Slavery?! FFS!

It's not fine to pay shitty wages to anyone. Europeans were and are here working in the vast majority of cases entirely legally and being paid at least minimum wage, and in most cases well above.

What I think will actually happen is they will end up opening up immigration to other countries where there really is cheap labour or there will just be more outsourcing, or more jobs will disappear overseas. Priti Patel said in a speech a couple of years ago that she wanted more immigration from Bangladesh. Personally I don't care who comes from where but I don't think many people voting to leave the EU were placing a vote to replace EU immigration with that from the Indian subcontinent.

British people are lazy when compared to many EU workers . The fact that farmers can’t get local people to pick fruit and veg just proves that point .
With a smaller workforce available , wages will have to rise and so will food prices .

How did fruit get picked and tables waited prior to 1997? I tend to think certain industries will revert to whatever they did then.

And unemployment is far higher than 4% once you include people who are underemployed or on zero hours contracts.

Disabled and long term sick? Put them to work in the fields.

Retirees? Put them to work in the fields.

Living too far away from the fields to get there? Oh, that's easy - get a private contractor to provide on site accommodation or take over disused military bases and bus them out each day. On site medics to provide for all their healthcare needs honest, food laid on, heating and lighting laid on, so just a 'small' deduction made from benefit at source to 'cover' costs including the profits for shareholders of each contractor.

What to call it, though? Maybe talk about the accommodation as 'houses of work'? Or acknowledge it's a camp that concentrates idle workers in one place where they're needed?

Maybe use Iain Duncan's Smith recorded explanation from an interview on BBC TV for why it's so desperately important for these poor people to have meaning and motivation to change their lives? They could put up such motivational messages over the premises, just so the inmates resident workers are encouraged to see the value in what they're doing. Maybe stick the most poetic phrase over the front gates so everybody knows the ethos of the place? Yeah, that'll be a great idea. Let us have IDS's quote over the front gates;

'Work makes you free'.

British workers are lazy and we should be working like the Chinese
Good luck with making that happen unless they plan to make Britain into a dictatorship and install a surveillance state

@Aposterhasnoname, people who want to do it should be doing it. Nobody should be forced to. There’s no shame in cleaning, I’m friends with a self employed cleaner and she makes good money. My mother was a career and took great pride in her work. However, there’s a world of difference between someone flying here to work hard for 3 years to build a house in their home country or someone with limited qualifications doing what they can to support their family (and being proud to do so) and a disabled person being sanctioned for not being able to do it.

Canadians don’t do those jobs either. So we import “temporary foreign workers” from Central America for agriculture and the Philippines for most everything else. This is a path to citizenship, but not always.

The phrase economically inactive is used to conjure up images of lazy workshy feckless etc people watching daytime TV all day because they don't want to do anything else
I'm sure there are lots of people who don't have time for paid work because they have lots of other work and duties to carry out, others who have enough money or savings to live on and prefer to enjoy their free time rather than work.
I would probably be considered economically inactive I own my own home albeit at a modest flat I have a good amount of savings because I have always been through and a small amount of self-employed work that earns me enough to be comfortable.
Will I be forced to toil in the fields or care for the elderly just because I'm not earning a lot even though I have no desire to earn more than I do?

@Tellmetruth4

I suggest you you check out modern slavery Before you start lecturing to me. You'll find it’s rife amongst Eastern European’s doing the very minimum wage jobs mentioned on here. In fact part of my job is to ensure that the people employed by my company are not involved in any way, and they most certainly are being beaten raped and murdered if they try to escape.

So how dare you suggest that they are all “building big houses back home”

FFS.

Good luck with making that happen unless they plan to make Britain into a dictatorship and install a surveillance state

That is being arranged.

As usual the truth is somewhere in the middle. To say that students cannot work and that long term sick cannot work and SAHMs cannot work is accepting that someone else has to support these groups.

That's fine if you have parents or spouses who are happy and able to do that. Not fine if the expectation is that The State pays.

The attitude has to change. We all have to live.

and it is a mythin that the EU workers were underpaid - they mostly were not.