One of the problems with daily economics reporting is that while events move quickly, economies and corrections go very, very slowly…..and then so quickly nobody can keep up. Thus the journalist is knackered both ways – and the reader easily confused:

14 July 2010

Unemployment falls as part-timers hit record high

15th July 2010

UK long-term unemployment soars to 1997 levels

Without being patronising, The Slog isn’t a news-site, it’s a explain, interrogate and if necessary correct the news site. The two links above are telling a story that is long and bitter: but the interpretation should (I think, anyway) be short and sweet.

Part-time workers as a part of the economy have been growing for nearly six months. This reflects the fact that most of these people are actually ‘unemployed’ from their chosen metier – but have taken on what’s available rather than do nothing.

The employer attitude/behaviour here is straightforward: no orders today and no confidence in the future…so cut the overhead by losing headcount and hiring casual labour as and when required.
Non-contract labour is a long-term trend now in the British economy. That won’t change until genuine confidence returns in the shape of a better-managed economic and export drive.

Long-term unemployment (LTU) is rising for two reasons. First, graduates on the cusp of LTU who’ve been out of college for just over a year and can’t find a job – this is fairly small numbers in the greater scheme of things – although the syndrome will worsen sharply after August. Second, a growing number of ill-educated and unmotivated people have been bounced out of the largely unproductive retail and State jobs they’d been handed. Their experience of the State-will-provide/falling standards/nobody fails/it’s not my fault culture has convinced them that there’s nothing they can do, and anyway why should they?
Those who have risen above this (and are, I suspect, brighter) can be found among the growing ranks of those doing something rather than nothing. I’d be willing to bet that among this unfortunate crew are tomorrow’s entrepreneurs….if they can get the finance.

I have little doubt that the Tories will bring in measures to boot the culturally challenged up the backside, for which action they will subjected to a tidal wave of vilification. But let’s face it – this is the obvious thing to do.

The sad thing is that, along the way, some over-enthusiastic commissars on the Tory Right will also tell those in wheelchairs to get on their bikes. But that’s inevitable now: if one runs away from reality for six years (and I do still think that for the West, 2004 was the pivotal year) then this is where it ends: US States going bankrupt, and police numbers being slashed by 25%. You read it here first.

The media are still stuffed to the gunnels with folks saying how unfair all this is. It isn’t unfair, it’s an unfortunate inevitability. Every last one of us colluded in it to some extent. If we spent the time thinking rather than moaning, we’d get to somewhere else more pleasant more quickly.