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.

There was one of Blair's new "technical" schools that opened up in a nearby town. It closed again a few years later because of low pupil numbers. Quite simply, parents were too snobby and thought their "little darlings" were too good for manual/trades so refused en masse to enrol their kids there.

My sister is the same. Her son apparently was "too bright" to learn a trade and she frog marched him down the A level and Uni route. Trouble was, he didn't get good enough A levels to go to Uni, so he went to college instead to do a random course that she thought would give him enough "points" to get into Uni. He passed the course, got the "points" but still couldn't get into a Uni. He's now a shop assistant on minimum wage. He'd have been ideal to learn a trade - a big strong lad! She did the same with her daughter, too, persuading her to do a Business A level, which she got a low grade, then to college to do some kind of business diploma/NVQ or whatever, which she failed to complete, and now, she too, is minimum wage doing care work. Neither are "thick" but neither are really committed to "book learning" and aren't really academic. A different path of vocational skills, manual/trade apprenticeship would have suited them both much better and given them options to progress their careers, start businesses of their own, etc.

It's funny how such people whinge about the skills shortages in the trades and how hard it is to get decent workers, but don't realise the irony when they didn't want their precious offspring to learn a manual trade!

@User3456

I agree.

If employers offered sick pay and more paid parental leave then maybe people wouldn't feel pressured into coming to work and school with contagious diseases. I've experienced on a few occasions colleagues running back and forth between the desk and the toilets with noro - that should not be socially acceptable but it is. Also they need to stop harrassing parents who keep unwell kids off school. I had a letter basically threatening me with Child Protection because my otherwise non problematic child with good attendance was off one day with a headache and then following week with flu like illness. In what world is this attendance pressure desirable or appropriate? If you add a long term illness into the equation I can understand why somebody would choose not to work of they could avoid it. There's no regard for our health and wellbeing - they literally want to work us to death.

Thanks for the tips.

I'll pass this on to my agoraphobic, suicidal daughter who hasn't been able to leave her bedroom for the last 5 days.

She'll be over the moon to know all she has to do to cure her BPD is take a walk once a day and eat some fruit. Here was us thinking she needed treating by a clinical psychologist. How silly of us.

You are right that these things help our mental health and emotional well-being and for some people will be enough. They certainly can form a significant part of recovery and ongoing wellbeing, but there are a wide range of difficulties that humans can experience when it comes to our mental health and the severity can differ greatly too. It’s great that this was enough for you though.

@containsnuts

If employers offered sick pay ....

Sadly statutory sick pay which used to be financed by government is now paid for entirely by the employer, which is a massive cost, and many employers simply can't afford to pay anything more than the required amount under SSP. The change was basically yet another stealth tax on employers.

I disagree. Covid is an excuse. There are "some" people suffering and a lot of malingerers with a convenient excuse.

Aspirations from younger people have changed and I think education and work haven’t caught up with it. I’m not sure if anyone has spoken about the effects of social media and I am waiting for the day a massive report comes out which shows us just how much the internet has changed the way that we approach work and a career particularly at a young age.

Im in my mid 30s and had the attitude to just work, and so did many of my friends, you take on a job, work, do your best whilst simultaneously paving a way into your ideal career - but if you don’t have contacts in the field you want to be in, you find a job.

The attitude these days is that I need to work within my “dream job” and won’t take anything outside that scope. At the same time entry level positions are dwindling so for young people going straight into work they need to be ready made - with many taking up unpaid work or building portfolios online to prove that they are skilled enough - unless they take some sort of apprenticeship which are so competitive.

We need a massive reform in how we treat and train new workers.

Mental health is another issue all together and needs to be approached differently.

@Kwasi being in nature helped you, just you. You are basing your opinion on a study of one person. The idea that counselling and therapy help people feel better is based on thousands and thousands of studies carried out over a long period of time, all over the world and on many types of people. But you know better?

I don't know anyone with long covid, the long covid issue I see is people got too used to being paid to sit at home and now don't want to work

Ive got severe long covid. I was a teacher. When the pandemic hit, l thought fuck this, I’m not teaching in a petri dish. I retired at 57. Then l got long covid. I’d have been sacked anyway as l was too ill to work.

I was sick of being micro managed. My joints hurt from rushing round all day, and l had constant permanent back pain. I’d had a rough time with anxiety and the menopause, so left.

Nothing would entice me back into the workforce. Working culture is awful atm. Bradford scales, performance management, nit picking bosses, stupid workloads and expectations. why would anyone want to work in that? It doesn’t make any difference to how people do their jobs.

YOU might not know anyone with long covid, but isn’t it 1.9 million in the U.K.? And 5 million in the US?

I’ve had mental health issues all my life.

Gardening and walking do fuck all.

A lovely gp, various psychiatrists and modern medicine sorts me out.

Of course they should be encouraging people to work.

How they do it is another matter but anyone who can work, even if part time should.

More randomised anecdotal "data"

Less than 37% of students go to Uni, that leaves plenty to take up trades.

But the problem here is you need to have an employer sponsor to learn to be e.g a gas fitter or an electrician and many construction workers are sole traders and do not want to take on the expense of employing someone, who once trained up, will often go and work for better money elsewhere.

Companies like Persimmon of course could train up young people but that will hit their profits and hence dividends, so they use the self employed... who don't want to train up young people and so it goes on.

@taxguru

UTC’s were opened in the first term of this government. Not by Blair

Why should they? if they aren't on benefits, what business is it of yours to dictate what people do?

Why should skilled people work for the NMW ?

Other countries in europe have better growth rates, better productivity and retire far earlier /with larger pensions.... how do they manage that?

The average UK worker is £10k worse off after the global financial crash than workers in Germany & France, employer and Govt greed is partly responsible for what you have now.

Why?
If they’re not claiming benefits and are doing something constructive with their time and all that is available is unsatisfying work that doesn’t use their skills to the max, why should they?

Why?

There was a Roman Empire. From India to Scotland.

Then there wasn't.

Same as the Greeks before. And the Egyptians before. And Babylonians. And Mongols. And vast swathes of Africa. And India. Empires rose. But critically all empires fall.

(1) Corruption. Unstable and febrile demographics. Diverse distant threats to borders. Lack of planning and inability to develop strategic plans led to poor land management and inability to deal with climatic shifts. Famine. Insurrection. Go back to (1) and most definitely do NOT collect £200.

What did for the Roman empire finally was the Catholic church it birthed. Which excluded a lot of Europe.

Byzantium took longer to fall (another 1,000 years). But was it a continuation of the Roman Empire, or a breakaway tribute act ? Irrelevant to use today because guess what ? Yup. It fell too.

You can have a lot of fun trying to pinpoint when the rot set in. Was it the fall of the Republic and a long decline of 400 years. Or was it after Hadrians consolidation ? Constantine ?

Why are people ‘abusing’ it?

Its incredibly difficult to get and has to be backed up by evidence from consultants and GP’s. They contact your gp.

😂

On yer bike.

I’m not working for someone who treats me like shit.

Also is all work really useful? I'm thinking of chuggers and cold callers for example. Some jobs are literally just making a complete nuisance of yourself.

@GPTec1 but you’re doing the same thing. Retail Assistant like it’s a poor choice. Sainsbury's and soon Tesco pay £12 an hour which is pretty good for the work at 18. They train you in whatever you want - warehouse, tills stacking stuff HR back office stuff. If you wanted to learn quickly about customer service, people management, work in general it’s great. Her kids could have a great start in retail, start their own empire. But no it’s always “just” retail.

The push for Uni and staying in education until 18 was to keep the workforce up to world standards. That’s got nothing to do with what’s available afterwards. As someone else pointed out employers expect a lot and pay a pittance ( have a look on Indeed or even the civil service) whereas the jobs that need contacts, a certain background or successful parents are paying a fortune. And yes that might have always been the case but the idea was supposed to be a more equitable society.

It isn’t so easy for youngsters to
find jobs now either. My teen has been looking for ‘Saturday’ jobs but it doesn’t seem so easy to get them as it was when I was young. These often moved into full time roles after education ended but before they start uni or careers.

For people to find work worthwhile the wage has to marry up with cost of living too. Youngsters are seeing no benefit to themselves in working certain roles because the wages for under 21 is so low. With housing costs so high they have no real motivation. Getting their own home isn’t about getting a job and saving for a year it’s now getting a career, a partner (to share costs) and waiting ten years. It probably looks unreachable for many hence the poor mental health.

As someone approaching 50 I don’t want harder physical work. If that was my only option of work then I would more likely go the benefits route if I can’t find a decent paying job in something lighter like admin.

I am 50. I work part time because I worked very hard to get my current career and my part time salary is enough. We are comfortable. Few luxuries and basic car and a low cost holiday every now and then. But my time is worth more to me than money at this age. You only get one life. There is no way on earth that I would now work as a waiter or cleaner etc. I do t have the energy and I don’t need to.

This is a really good point. I’m also in my 50s, sadly not part time and very well paid. I like my career (for the most part) and find it rewarding.

If I were to be made redundant and couldn’t get a similar role somewhere else there’s no way on earth I would take a minimum wage role just to be in the workforce. And I am a workaholic: I’m not one of those people desperate to retire but I am fucked if I would take a low paid and uninteresting job for the sake of it.

This isn’t the whole story and it doesn’t help with the mental health crisis or any of the other challenges facing younger people but supporting older workers in being able to do stimulating and well paid work for longer as opposed to shuffling them off into retirement in their 60s would be a start. If work was more appealing more people would want to do it.

Dh and I reference the end of the Roman Empire when we come across a way in which things, usually public services, have got worse with no prospect of them ever getting better. For instance, towns that used to have libraries, swimming pools, public transport, that no longer have those things, or only barely have them now.
It’s what we imagine it might have been like to live in post Roman Britain as public infrastructure like roads, baths, theatres etc gradually fell into decay.
We were in Hull last week and there are many vast, solidly built Victorian buildings surrounded by poverty, with nothing even approaching a similar quality being built now.

l claim top rate PIP due to severe long covid. I will continue to claim it while l need it.

I retired at 57, and can pay for myself and pay tax on it. The pip pays for things like cleaners/therapy/gardeners.