to think the government are on a hiding to nothing with their drive to get people back to work?

[molokoco]

On the Today Programme in Radio 4 this morning they had a segment where they were talking about "worklessness" in the UK and the number of unfilled vacancies and how the government wanted to push two large groups back into the work force the 18-24 year olds who are not working due to mental health issues and the over 50's who have dropped out of work in the past four years for a variety of reasons and who perhaps have the funds not to have to to work anymore.

They had a man on in his early 60's who was made redundant from what sounded like a highly paid business / finance type career in the city 4 years ago, he had initially applied for 100's of jobs over the next few years and was rejected he seemed to suspect due to his age. He work as a postman for a spell before he finally mentally came round to the idea of retirement. Obviously this man had the funds but so do a lot of the people retiring in their 50's either have that or their health is so poor they can no longer work while they wait endlessly for hospital appointments and treatment.

When I try to look at the kind of jobs that have the most vacancies in the UK the information I am seeing is things like hospitality, construction, manufacturing, agriculture workers and so on. It doesn't seem likely to me that someone who was previously in a high flying career but now feels pushed out due to ageism or someone with health issues is likely to want to take a job in any of those areas which likely involve some mix of heavy work, anti-social hours, low pay and a degree of precarity and perhaps not much in the way of long term prospects.

The man on the radio had applied for 100's of jobs within his field of experience and he would have kept working if he had landed one but it seems like well paid, jobs with good career prospects are still over subscribed with lots of people applying for that kind of work so employers will have their pick and ageism in recruitment is a known issue.

They had a Doctor on to discuss the mental health crisis in the young but he wasn't very coherent, he did mention about improving nutrition, exercise and prescribing gardening to people with mental health issues and suggested that when people go on the sick with poor mental health and spend a few weeks at home watching daytime TV then they will feel worse. I am sure he had a point but gardening isn't a substitute to getting proper mental heath treatment, it is part of that sure but I think young people need more than that and that the things that seem to be behind the rise in depression, anxiety and hopelessness need to be addressed more widely. I also think that while younger people in good health may be more able to do the kind of work in hospitality or construction where the vacancies actually are the problems with these jobs still remain that they are often hard, heavy jobs, they can be low paid, antisocial hours and with fewer prospects in the long term.

It is sad to see people, especially young people drop out of the workforce right at the time their lives should be starting or for older people to feel pushed out due to their age or poor health but a few tax breaks isn't going to make an ex-executive or ex-teacher suddenly want to take a job on a building site or as a chambre maid and a few gardening sessions isn't going to make up for the utter lack of mental health care and magically cure young people of their anxiety or despair in a world where a home and a family seem so far out of reach.

Surely that’s the ideal work life balance to aim for?

the issue is surest vast mental health problems in the young who are not working at all!

Plus this government have allowed the health of the nation to get into a sorry state generally with cuts to public services and massive increases in poverty.

Health, like education, housing and water has become a mere commodity. Something to be traded, charged, value added, and sued for.

Can't help but remember the Clash:

"Lately one or two have fully paid their dues ..."

Only it seems that wasn't the plan, was it ? As this thread shows, people who have paid their dues are a pain in the arse because they are very hard to bully.

Hence the ongoing hate campaign from the powers that be.

The government is of course delusional, not to mention unwilling to actually improve society. The main factor in long-term sick people not working is, surprise, long-term sickness. Forcing people to take unsuitable jobs by threatening them or cutting off their benefits won't improve the workforce, it will just create more poverty or sickness.

I know four people who've quit the workforce recently. Two of them have Long Covid, one severe enough that they will never work again unless a magical cure is found, regardless of what measures or threats anyone may apply to them. The other one is more mildly affected and could probably work a remote job, except employers are all pushing "back to office" and long commutes. They've been looking, but even jobs advertised as remote turn out to be "hybrid". Another person had a very physical job (an essential one for society) until he suffered an injury. He cannot work again until the injury is fixed via a "non-urgent" surgery, he's been waiting for two years and cannot afford to go private. Finally, the fourth person is one of those mythical "young people with mental health issues" that everyone deems to be feckless and lacking in resilience. I've witnessed them in crisis and their suffering is intense, and genuine. They were offered 10 CBT sessions by the NHS, which fixed nothing. Now they are entirely without support. The government can push these people back to work,... how exactly?

The government is of course delusional, not to mention unwilling to actually improve society.

They are also in charge. And may well be forever.

@Livinghappy I can answer your question. Our defined benefits pensions are 35k plus between us. Both of us will have 35 years NI contributions for full state pension. We bought our house in 1999, within 2 years the house next door sold for double what we paid. We also made shrewd investments from very young ages. We had a stellar return on an investment which meant we paid off our mortgage within 5 years. I started paying in to my pension at 21. Not having housing costs for 20 years, that’s why I could retire at 55, DH is younger than me he is working on a huge project that he wants to see finished so will retire at about 57, project dependant.

@lizzowhiz

Completely agree with the principle here but I would never endorse a return to the old grammar school system which divided children at age 11 and funnelled them into an inflexible binary system of 'academic' or 'non academic'. It was a ridiculous system; I know many people of my generation who 'failed' the 11 plus and then ended up being unable to sit O and A levels despite being really bright.

Perhaps instead of scrapping the "two tier" system, the experts should have found ways of addressing the very real problem you highlight? I.e. create a way of transferring for those who are "late bloomers"? Or extend the sec-mods to do O and A levels?

Scrapping the whole system and making a "one size fits all" clearly doesn't work, especially since comps don't do all the "manual/technical" type of subjects that the old sec-mods did. We've sleep walked into a "grammar style" mostly academic education for everyone, which is failing those who aren't academic!

@Namechange25793

Everyone should expect to be able to afford a minimum standard of living when working full time.

Yes, but how can you make that happen? As we've seen with the introduction and increases in minimum wage and the tax credit system, it's just fuelled inflation, especially housing costs, over the past 20 years. Simple economics of supply and demand - more money and high demand means suppliers increase their prices! We need to regulate the entire housing market so that property investors, landlords and even "normal" homeowners can't keep benefitting massively from the demand shortage with ever increasing prices/rents. If wages doubled, but housing and other costs also doubled, then people living at the bottom with no opportunity to save are no better off.

@taxguru it would be worth looking at the Dutch and German systems. They are not perfect and their flexibility has reduced since I went through the Dutch system, but the foundations of workable change are there.

Big barriers are the fact that both are selective and that the upheaval would be massive and therefore costly. The biggest positive would be finally valuing vocational education instead of paying lip service and bringing in useless things like T levels.

And instead of trying to improve the situation they now want to force the unemployed into National Service.

Room and board for single people. NO single people should at least have a one bedroom flat. What about privacy and dating. Why is it always people without kids who should get and expect less even when they are working.

it would be worth looking at the Dutch and German systems.

The best way to stop good ideas is to give examples where they work for foreign types*. Can you imagine the likes of elected Member of Parliament Lee Anderson if you were to suggest a European country did something well ?

*Americans excluded obviously.

It is always the same, isn't it.
Single people don't deserve any more than a small room with a bed and wardrobe, and sharing a kitchen and bathroom with 20 other single people.
Never mind that they might have hobbies that need room.
Only way to get out that hell is to meet some one and pop out a few kids.

Room and board is fine as a short term whilst waiting for a flat/small house.

Single people don't deserve any more than a small room with a bed and wardrobe, and sharing a kitchen and bathroom with 20 other single people.

It's almost as if some posters on here want to go back to 'the good old days' when casual labourers did indeed have to live like that.

There's a reason it changed. There's a reason workers want to be paid and treated decently. Not supporting that - and I'll say it again - shows a shocking lack of good morals.

Agreed.

Even on this thread where everyone agrees on what’s broken it’s still “bright kids do Uni and non academic ( or thick) kids do trades”.

It’s perfectly possible to be intelligent and not go through Uni. We should not be encouraging the idea that good a levels and Uni makes you better at life than someone in their 20’s who has the chutzpah to succeed in trade/ business or any career of their choosing.

Two totally disparate thoughts: I have sometimes thought that an unappreciated element of the class system was that instead of all the brightest people going into a few professions, you would get very bright people in all kinds of occupations. In almost all work, with any skill, it requires intelligent people to be really good at it. I think of my neighbour, who is a contractor, very working class, has managed to set himself up with a lot of seemingly disparate, but actually quite useful, certifications, and is highly sought after because he runs a good project, and his workers like him and perform. He makes way more money than me, or even my husband who is a scientist with a bunch of degrees. It would have been easy for him to be pushed into a business degree or something stupid like that.

In the past, smart people applied their smarts to the type of work common in their social class. No going back to that of course but I think it is maybe holding us back now.

Second disparate thought: Do we really think that all of a sudden more people are not working because we are so much more unhealthy? Yes, there is some worsening health data, but in the great scheme of things we are still pretty healthy compared to the past, and have better medical care, and people in places with worse health issues work a lot more.

Self-reported mental health is clearly worse, but I don't think it's disease that is the major factor.

I agree.

I've moved into a construction related industry after almost a decade in a graduate job and honestly feel that many of the young people I meet are much more switched on than a lot of students.

At 20yo a trades/construction worker has often already been working for four years, whilst a student has usually never had a full time job or maybe any job - perhaps a job pulling pints.

I remember many of my dorm mates being absolute filthy pigs when I moved in. Many had never lived away from their parents and couldn't manage basic things like emptying the bins. And then there's a lot of binge drinking and immature behavior which, while not uncommon across that age group, is much less likely to be seen in youths getting up and going to work every day - I only had eight hours of lectures a week!

Trades/construction workers earn more than graduates (average salary £10k higher) and statistically get on the property ladder either three or four years earlier - I forget which.

Even bricklayers are earning about £45k on many sites I attend and in some parts of the country well over £100k as they're so short in supply and houses can't be built without them. It's been this way for a decade now. The big contractors will pay the crazy fees (£2.5k a week sometimes) to get houses completed.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11903651/amp/Some-bricklayers-earning-125-000-shortages.html

*Second disparate thought: Do we really think that all of a sudden more people are not working because we are so much more unhealthy? Yes, there is some worsening health data, but in the great scheme of things we are still pretty healthy compared to the past, and have better medical care, and people in places with worse health issues work a lot more.

Self-reported mental health is clearly worse, but I don't think it's disease that is the major factor.*

Good points

There just aren't enough people.
Sickness absence and mental health issues have a part to play but it's simple- we had a lot of East Europeans and other young people from the EU here doing a huge variety of jobs until Brexit.
Now they have left because they either needed a visa or weren't given leave to stay - or they didn't feel welcome.
These were either highly skilled workers or young people who were over qualified for barista work etc but travelling or studying.
Traumatised Ukrainian refugees and rich Hong Kong exiles are the only legal immigrants we can get now. You could be a brain surgeon asylum seeker from anywhere else and you would not be allowed to work.

And if you are bright and can write and talk to people you quickly move up the ladder.

You can be a brain surgeon from Ukraine and you are likely to have trouble finding work even though you are legally allowed to.
My former Ukrainian guest who has barely any qualifications found a supermarket job with no trouble but her friends who are a dentist and nurse are still unemployed because they are not qualified for their professions in the UK and they get turned down for unskilled work because they are overqualified. With no guarantee of being allowed to stay here beyond a few years they can’t borrow money for career development as a permanent resident with a UK credit history could. We appear to be absolutely useless as a nation at making the most of the skills and talents of the people we have.

Do we really think that all of a sudden more people are not working because we are so much more unhealthy?

Erm, yes? Because that's what the statistics show, and that's also what I can see in real life, with people I know. I have no trouble believing it. Why are some people so keen on making up convoluted alternative explanations?

We are still in a pandemic (as per WHO! yes!) which explains the more abrupt degradation in physical health since 2020, but things had begun to be bad for a while before that, mostly due to the destruction of the NHS. The trauma of the pandemic, wars, economic problems, accelerated climate change, lack of hope for young people, all of it is also enough to cause plenty of mental health problems. Frankly, I'm not surprised at the number of people who are not doing well.

It's silly to compare people who do history and engineering degrees - it's very unlikely that they are going to have the same skillset, talents and interests.

It is generally easier to get a job if you have a STEM degree. But a large chunk of the student population doesn't have the ability to do a STEM degree. Thankfully there are plenty of jobs that you can do with a non-STEM degree, but it takes a bit longer to find them. If I'd done science A levels I'd have got 2 Ds at most, what good would that have been? Much better that I played to my strengths.

I am sure there are quite a few people not working because of health reasons. But I bet a lot just can't get jobs because employers want the moon on a stick and simply won't train people.

My sister is a single parent and has been looking for a job for over a year now.

She had an interview last week for a job she'd be bloody brilliant at but they wanted her to be available from 6am to 11pm with shifts anywhere in those hours. Just not the same hours each day or week, for min wage. It's just not possible, especially because the school has no breakfast or after school clubs.

No one should be expected to live like that kids or no kids. How can you plan anything, e.g. GP appointments. If employers want people to be on call then they should pay them to be on call.