If it isn't unemployment then why count it as it is, let it have it's own measure, give it's own identity, make it feel important.

Who counts on the underemployed stats? Is it new starters? Part time workers? Full time workers? Do they want the extra hours to buy heat, clothes, an iPad, a holiday, dental work (sorry, just forked out £49)?

On the flip side, are there overemployed (made up word) people? How many want less hours?

Then there's the firms themselves, if they don't have the orders surely it's better to employ on the basis of what they can fulfill? I was at a customer last Thursday, the line runs on average 3 days per week, but things are picking up and that will increase probably towards the middle of next year based on how the sector operates. Vauxhalls at Ellesmere Port is another. You can bet the guys/girls at these places would class themselves as underemployed, but I will also bet they'd rather be that than unemployed.

Nobody minds the classic four day week on reduced pay to get the company out of the mire approach, indeed this is why a redundancy procedure recommends that ALL employees are consulted because often that is the preferred method rather than having job losses.

The problem of under-employment at the moment isn't so much that "Its a bit slack so we'll drop one shift", its the growing tendency to advertise new posts as limited hours, 20 being a favourite, zero being the devil incarnate and then using employees on those contracts as spare capacity - its nice and flexible for the employer and seems like a good idea at the time but in reality it is no way to continue running an economy if you hope to be a financially strong economy.

For one thing, no-one on 20 hours a week can support themselves let alone a family, on £126 gross (NMW) per week - anyone who is only guaranteed those hours will struggle to find accommodation and will definitely be claiming housing benefit and working tax credits, in other words the public purse is paying people to work, worse still those employees will barely be paying any tax and their tax take will definitely be far greater than their contribution.

Its fine doing this in such austere times as we just have to get through, but its no master plan for the future and some recording of such numbers should be made (if not already), the ideal plan when the good times roll again should be to have everyone out of the range of tax credits and not by simply reducing the limits for when they become payable.

Again, thanks for proving that the Coalition took over a growing economy and caused it to falter before any Eurozone issue occurred.

Because underemployment is an important indicator of the strength of the economy. When the unemployment figures are released we get plenty of different stats on unemployment, employment, private & public sector employment, long term unemployment, youth unemployment, number of jobs, vacancies, and the claimant count but no figures on underemployment despite them being part of the same method of data collection.

The straight unemployment figure is a little like the straight GDP figures. It's good they're heading in the right direction but they are one indicator. To just take that one indicator, whilst ignoring all others is misleading as to the strength of the economy.

The more logical measure to adopt would be those in full time employment, defined say as a minimum of 35 hours a week.

It would then be simple enough to calculate a total figure of how many people are part-time, on zero hours and actually unemployed.

No politician is gong to do that though as I suspect the figures would be pretty shocking but it would give us a true figure of how many of those 30m people in work stand a chance of supporting themselves as they have a full time job.

The rest? Well the state (i.e. you and me assuming you are a taxpayer) will be topping up their wages with benefit payments i.e. subsidising the profits of their employers.

Are you happy to be doing that?



My Dad used to say (and this is decades ago I remember him saying it) that overtime was a great evil as it meant employers could save on employing enough workers to do the necessary work. It has always happened that people in employment take extra hours and employers are happy for them to do so. Back when my Dad said this is would have been seen as very left wing given things like zero hours contracts were unheard of.

There are also increasing numbers ( record numbers in fact) of over 65's still working.

What is needed is a combination of decent wages, pensions and legislation to ensure employers don't exploit people and people don't hog jobs.




Companies like Vauxhall do things called planning. They know what the demand for cars is at particular times of year and they employ economist to predict what they need to build. They aren't take by surprise and suddenly need to rush out and contact an employment agency to employ someone on zero hours contracts.

They couldn't anyway as I doubt there are people with the necessary skills sat by the phone waiting for a few hours assembly line work this week so they will retain their workers as a proper contract with a certain amount of guaranteed work - and pay.

For things like shops that have a Christmas employment issue they know what day Christmas falls on and ha e for decades planned accordingly. Temporary work at such times has always been there but is no excuse for zero hours jobs elsewhere.

Basically zero hours contracts excuses companies from planning and competence. They can just rush out and pick a few people up. If unemployment ever does drop significantly they won't be able to find people to work like this. What are they going to do then?

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