To think people on benefits can’t win

[Flamingosareflummoxed]

I’ve heard so many people this week, in real life, moaning about people on benefits. I get it that we are all struggling. The cost of living is crippling.
But every week there are posts on here from women who were in 70K per year HR positions who are finding it difficult to get interviews for MW jobs.
There are no jobs.
The few jobs that there are will be flooded with applications, why would recruiters chose someone who has been unemployed for years?
Plus all those with long term disabilities who need reasonable adjustments.
Its like people want to bash people knowing there is no real alternative.

There were no male carers at my DM’s very good care home, where she lived for nearly 8 years. Presumably the female carers used hoists if needed.

Correct, I've been looking for a year next month not on benefits as not eligible for them. I've applied for waitressing factory work retail. Fundraising all on top of what I'm qualified for which is Tax and business admin. Wasn't a high earner £50k but can't even get an interview. Paid a lot for a professional written CV but I've had two interviews in a year, there might be a lot of jobs, which I doubt but friends in recruitment say there are hundreds of applicants and at nearly 60 I get sidelined. I have £500 savings left and then I'm destitute

The problem is there's a good chunk of people who would be slightly better off working.

But it would come at the cost of time.

These are people who are probably going to only be able to get nmw/living wage work, at least at first, only they might be giving up 30 hours a week of time with their kids/leisure time

Its not worth it, and most people can't see long term & recognise positives like employer pension contributions, pay growth, and better income levels when children have grown up and you are no longer eligible for child elements of UC.

Its very difficult to access, inflexible, and not really free quite often! And as to the quality...

Absolutely and just to add in a lot of other countries - yeah you do get benefits in accordance with your last salary but not forever! You are given a cushion for a finite time and then expected to get back to work.

Living on lifelong benefits without ever working but being able is the problem.

People act like being on benefits is some luxury lifestyle when half the country is one redundancy or illness away from needing help themselves. If people with years of experience can’t even get minimum wage interviews right now, what exactly are disabled people, carers, or those out of work long-term supposed to do? The anger should be aimed at the state of the economy and lack of opportunities, not at people already struggling.

If you are on benefits for more than 6 months (and able bodied) there is plenty of rubbish that needs picking up, plenty of parks that need mowing, and plenty of graffiti that needs cleaning.

Agreed. We get UC but the difference between my husband not working and working is about 1600 a month with the 55p reclaim

My current contract ends at the end of June (I'm self employed, previously in a 'head of' role, bags of experience and became a contractor because I sent off huge numbers of applications that resulted in just one interview). Dh works shifts, autistic 9yo dd not currently attending school - still enrolled in mainstream school and has a reintegration plan in place via the LA and school. My working days (Tues, Weds, Thurs) are spent juggling doing my actual work and supporting her online learning (for which she still needs huge amounts of reassurance and constant encouragement from me). She has a face to face tutor Mondays and Fridays.

I have literally no idea what will happen from June onwards. I can't apply for office based roles because of my dd's needs. I need hybrid/ wfh but they're the most contested positions with hundreds of applicants. I've applied for jobs several rungs below my level of skill/ experience but feedback is that I'm over qualified. I've given my CV to agencies I never hear from.

We have some savings (so we are more fortunate than many) so I wouldn't qualify for UC. Carers Allowance is a pittance. We wouldn't get by solely on dh's £30k salary.

I want a job. We wouldn't get by on benefits and I don't know anyone who is flush with money and on benefits.

There are people in all kinds of situations for reasons that are not their fault and that are beyond their control.

We're lucky. We have some options, even if we need to sell up and downsize. Many people don't even have options. I don't begrudge them benefits.

I was talking to DH a few weeks ago about the fact when we were kids everyone hated the Eastern Europeans who came over and, to quote South Park, “took our jobs”. In actual fact they most often worked for less than lots of Brits were willing to accept and also worked in jobs many Brits deemed beneath them.

The GRADUATE job market is tough right now because entry level GRADUATE roles are disappearing thanks to AI. There’s absolutely no shortage of minimum wage jobs in retail, bars, restaurants, fast food joints. If you want a job, they exist but they are mostly low paid which in itself means the person will likely still need benefits as a top up.

That’s a whole other problem I don’t have a solution for. Minimum wage is too low to survive on so you either take on two jobs and work 24/7 or the government has to provide a top up.

In Lancashire

If you are a single mum in rented housing you are often better off on benefits, working very part time hours and getting housing benefit and UC top ups, than working full time. I don’t blame them for doing this but the system is flawed.

A friend lives in East Anglia and works in a care home. They really struggle to get staff, get few applicants and many who start jack it in after a week or two because they can't hack with caring for people with dementia, who are often aggressive and incontinent, or having to work unsocial hours. They leave, mostly to work in retail, which is better paid and less demanding.

They have to use an agency to maintain safe staffing levels. The agency staff are invariably from overseas, mainly south Asia, and are often people who were nurses in their home countries who are working towards getting registered here. (Pre-Brexit, they were mostly from Poland and the Baltic states.)

The employed staff get paid a few pence above minimum wage, but the agency charges over £17ph. It doesn't seem to have dawned on the care home company that if they paid more, there would be more incentive for local staff to stay there.

Are they full time? I remember when I was job hunting in the early 2010s there was a job advertised 5 minutes away from me. It was 8 hours but they wanted you to be flexible. But how?

Meanwhile, I had two in and was paying 2400 out of my own pocket at one point 🙃

I think there’s always lots of reasons not to work. And yes I imagine for lots of people there are no jobs because they haven’t built up a good academic record or skills young, then had kids and gaps in employment. So yes I think there are few jobs for them. I also think for those people it is often better off to be on benefits.

Lots of people don’t exactly help themselves when it comes to being in the job market.

Exactly.

The difference between being on benefits and working in a NMW job needs to be far greater. If work meant a person was significantly, tangibly better off than a person living on benefits then there would be far more incentive to work.

yes of course in the long term you’re better off with a workplace pension and anyone living on benefits is screwed long term but people quite justifiably want to see the difference now, not just in future terms. Anyone getting off their backside and working a full time job (which might be monotonous/ unpleasant/ tough - but necessary) should have far more income in their pocket each week than someone who doesn’t work.

The better off part of not working is having all that spare time to relax cover your caring responsibilities.

This is such a shame: he sounds like a great chap.

It is definitely something to think about for people with older children/teens who move rurally. Being able to work from 14 was a massive boon to my DC, living in a town, whereas some of their friends had no work experience at all by 18 because they lived in a very rural areas. It's a massive disadvantage.

it will never improve. If you cut benefits then people will starve, it’s already a struggle. So minimum wage needs to go up a LOT but they won’t.

Yep - absolutely. It's very true where I live, where nearly all jobs are minimum wage. It really isn't worth single parents working.

Minimum wage going up "a lot" would ruin the country.

This
it’s so difficult for people

Childminders round here have a waiting list that’s a mile long!!!!!

The wraparound provision has been extended at my kids primary school just this academic year, it was 8-8:45 then 3:30-5
am was £5 and pm £7 so not too bad however there’s a government initiative for schools to provide this to enable people to go back to work

it is now 7:30-8:45 and 3:30-6
am £8.50 & pm £12.50

AND you have to pay for the full session even if you collect earlier at say 4:40-5pm

They also run a holiday club which is about £35-40 a day!!

It is more expensive now tho as the inhouse staff they had (TA’s who did a bit extra) didn’t want to work until 6pm (or 6:15-30 by the time they cleared up!) or start at 7am ready for a 7:30 start as it’s such a long day for them, and so it’s facilitated by an outside company and from what I understand is well run and the kids enjoy it but it’s balancing this against the wages and if you have 2-3-4 kids it’s very expensive and the sibling discount is only 10% it’s not huge.

We also keep getting emails sent out saying that there is availability for the following sessions x y z and when they published the minutes from the recent governors meeting they have now said that some sessions during the week are not viable with the number of children that are attending mainly on an Friday as I think if people work part time or wfh and can do a school run, it is often on a Friday.

We recently advertised for a receptionist in one of the clinics at the hospital I work in and for context, it’s a 25 hour contact at band 2 and so it’s literally just above minimum wage

week 1 is 8am - 1pm
week 2 is 12:30pm - 5:30pm
to allow a handover between the 2 staff members

We had no end of enquiries

• can I just do the mornings
• can I start at 9:30
• could I do the 5 hours 9:30-2:30
• can I do term time only

The answer was no because it didn’t meet the needs of the clinic service in a hospital and furthermore over 700 applied for this job and lots of these were fully flexible to do am/pm shift AND were happy to be available to do extra for holidays and sickness cover.

as it happens the lady already in post loves going to gym classes in the morning and has said she will do all the afternoons as it suits her and the other lady is happy with this, but the manager has said that she is happy as long as it’s covered am and pm and it’s worked out ok for them but they could be asked to do afternoons to cover or on another clinic band they’re both ok with that.

I see why you think this should be sufficient but for many it simply isn’t. We have twins in nursery and even with free hours and tax free we still pay 1600 a month. We are fortunate that this is affordable for us but for many it might not be.

I'm a carer for an disabled adult ds and I've been on benefits for a long time. I don't even pay attention to comments about people on benefits, it's just chat from people who aren't going to influence policy or change my entitlement so there's no point. My ds is too disabled to work and has never had problems getting his PIP awarded so I'd always be able to claim Carers. Financially it's manageable because we are council tenants and rent is low, and we have disabled Freedom Passes so we have no travel costs. We can pay our bills and buy essentials.

The job market is hard now and I have friends who are struggling to find work. I wouldn't be able to find work as I haven't been in paid work for a long time, but I have no requirement to work and am not looking. Being a carer keeps me busy enough and the government rules recognise that.

The thing is, many people get no help if they become ill or redundant. If you have a mortgage you won’t get housing benefit yet it still has to be paid, if you have over £16k in savings you won’t be entitled to UC. Many people would only get JSA (which isn’t much) for 6 months, provided they’ve been paying NI for the last few years.