Esther McVey must be so proud. She has managed to make the unemployment benefit system do the exact opposite of its original purpose.
Today, the Coalition announced that in the last three months the UK has enjoyed “the largest quarterly rise in employment since records began”, with 30.15 million people in work.
This might be a good thing, depending on whether those jobs are well-enough paid to keep their holders from having to claim in-work benefits. The number of hours worked has also increased, but this may be due to the increase in employment itself, rather than an indication of fewer zero-hours or part-time jobs, which help employers more than workers.
The real cause for concern is the huge leap in the number of unemployed people who are not claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance, to 1,015,000. That’s a massive 43.7 per cent of the total workless population.
Ms McVey was probably whooping with…
View original post 474 more words
Benefit tales 