Unemployment

Chart of the Day: Unfilled Vacancies

The seasonally adjusted number of unfilled vacancies in the UK economy has grown steadily over the last two years from just under 590,000 to a new high of 680,000. What might this figure be telling us?

Zero unemployment - costs and benefits

Over at About Economics.com Mike Moffatt considers whether a zero rate of unemployment, even if it were attainable, might not be a good thing. He argues that “A positive rate of unemployment is the price we pay for technological development and for people chasing their dreams.” It is a good article for revising three of the main causes of unemployment and for thinking about the possible macroeconomic effects when the poll of surplus labour shrinks to a very low size.  My AS revision presentation on unemployment is here and my A2 revision presentations are here: (1) Natural rate (2) Philips Curve and the NAIRU

Stormy Weather

The UK has been battered by uncomfortable and volatile conditions and fears over damage to property this week - and the weather has been awful as well.

When it rains, it pours, and this is as true for the macroeconomy as anything else.

www.tutor2u.net/economics/podcasts/uk-unemployment180208.wmvEconomics Podcast: Unemployment

This new podcast looks at recent trends in UK unemployment.

Unemployment - In Charts

The labour market provides a rich stream of information about what is happening in the real economy. It is often said that the number of people of work is a lagging indicator of the economic cycle - is that true this time around? Unemployment is still falling on both of the main published measures. And the number of people in work has never been higher. Thus far the signs from the labour market do not suggest an economy teetering on the brink of a slowdown or, worse still, a full-blown recession. My new ‘labour market in charts’ provides a set of fourteen up to the minute charts and is streamed here. The presentation can also be downloaded from the Tutor2u web site, it might be a useful resource if you are teaching aspects of unemployment at AS and A2 level.

Good Job?

At last, some good news for the British economy? Unemployment fell in the UK in the final quarter of 2007, with both the Claimant Count and Labour Force Survey measures recording decreasing joblessness. Overall, the employment rate has risen to 74.7%.

The Claimant Count recorded a drop of 10,800 to 794,600 and the LFS a fall of 61,000 to 1.61 million. As expected, the distribution of employment and unemployment differs from region to region, and also within regions.

Getting people back into work

There is a core of unemployed in any modern economy that we find very hard to get back into work. Today’s newspapers carried reports of a new variant on the carrot and stick approach with council house applicants facing the possibility of having to sign a contract committing themselves to look for work if they want to remain on the waiting list for public housing. A more positive approach to finding sustainable work for the long-term unemployed is shown in this brief av clip from BBC Scotland which lauds the work done by the Wise Group over the last quarter of a century. It is a really good clip to use when teaching strategies to bring down structural unemployment and ties in neatly with the growth of interest in social enterprise.

Tower of Strength in Wales

Miners from Tower Colliery, Wales’ last deep mine, have marched for the final time marking its closure. 13 years ago the miners of Tower Colliery took the gamble that they could run the pit at a profit and raised £2m to bring about a management buy out of the threatened mine from UK Coal. Their risk-taking paid off and in the intervening years, over 600,000 tonnes of coal has been excavated from the seams. One of the leaders of the group - Tyrone O’Sullivan - has written a book about the history of Tower and the battle to save the pit. This is available from Amazon. But today (25th January 2008) the colliery closed the mine’s future sealed by the simple fact that deep underground, the coal has run out.

This BBC audio-visual report from BBC wales news is a strong and vivid piece and could easily be used as an illustration of structural change in the economy, the risks of unemployment and also some of the multplier effects that can kick in when a major employer closes down.

New drift and open cast mining is expanding in Wales and this will provide job opportunities for many of the miners formerly employed at Tower Colliery. For the remainder, many of whom are approaching retirement, the key will be the value that they can extract from the sale of the colliery land.

More background here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/7191668.stm

First coal taken from new Welsh drift mine
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/6925416.stm