Thread by @Frances_Coppola

Fact checking the claims of Ben Bradley and Ann Widdecombe on #PoliticsLive.
1/ Most of the unemployed have been unemployed for less than 6 months. Longer-term unemployment is much lower. ons.gov.uk/employmentandl…

The data underlying the chart above show that in Jan-Mar 2023 about 300,000 people had been unemployed for longer than 12 months, and just under 170,000 people had been unemployed for 6-12 months.

That's less than 500,000 people who are potentially available to fill agricultural jobs. And that's before we look at the reasons why they are unemployed, whether they are capable of doing those jobs and whether training would make any difference to their ability.

I'm excluding the shorter-term unemployed because with overall unemployment as low as it currently is (only 3.9%), the vast majority of these will find jobs. They don't need retraining or directing into shortage industries.

A healthy labour market always has some short-term unemployment (remember that unemployment is defined as "looking for work", not claiming unemployment benefits). It's normal "churn".

It's the long-term unemployed we need to be concerned about. And solving their problems really isn't as simple as retraining them as fruit pickers. If only it were.

As for Bradley's claim that 2 million economically active could be brought into the workforce to do shortage jobs such as fruit picking, I'm afraid this is pie in the sky. This is economic activity broken down by age, from the ONS publication above:

The chart shows that young people (16-24) have largely moved out of economic activity into employment. The ONS says these are mostly students getting jobs. There are few economically inactive young people now.

And here are the reasons why people of working age are economically inactive. By far the largest proportion are long-term sick. How on earth is retraining them going to enable them to take physically demanding jobs like fruit picking? They need healthcare, not training.

Bradley and Widdecombe haven't done even basic research into unemployment and economic activity. They don't know the statistics and they are proposing dangerously simplistic solutions to an extremely complex problem. They need retraining!

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