If anyone is daft enough to think that today’s fall in the claimant count measure of unemployment means that the labour market is improving, one fact should disabuse them - the number of full-time employees fell by 82,000 between November-January and February-April.
This means that only 47.7% of the working age population, and only 36.5% of the adult population, are full-time employees.
In other words, what we were brought up to think of as “normal” is, in fact, a minority activity, and is only barely a majority activity even for working-age men, only 55.8% of whom are full-time employees.
This low proportion is not merely the result of the recession. Even before the slump, the proportion of men who are full-time employees was falling slightly.
This is not because of an increase in self-employment; this ratio has hovered around 10% of the population for some time. Instead, it’s due (statistically if not causally speaking) in part to increasing numbers of students and part-timers.
I’m not sure what to make of this. It’s tempting to come over all post-Marxist, and say that it means people’s identities are no longer bound up with their workplace, if indeed they ever were.
This means that only 47.7% of the working age population, and only 36.5% of the adult population, are full-time employees.
In other words, what we were brought up to think of as “normal” is, in fact, a minority activity, and is only barely a majority activity even for working-age men, only 55.8% of whom are full-time employees.
This low proportion is not merely the result of the recession. Even before the slump, the proportion of men who are full-time employees was falling slightly.
This is not because of an increase in self-employment; this ratio has hovered around 10% of the population for some time. Instead, it’s due (statistically if not causally speaking) in part to increasing numbers of students and part-timers.
I’m not sure what to make of this. It’s tempting to come over all post-Marxist, and say that it means people’s identities are no longer bound up with their workplace, if indeed they ever were.
Once you've been made redundant, you never define yourself in terms of the paid work that you do again. I understand myself through the unpaid things.
Posted by: Stuart | June 16, 2010 at 02:08 PM
What is the proportion of small business owners who do not pay themselves a PAYE salary?
Posted by: Calum | June 16, 2010 at 03:03 PM
Maybe it is a consequence of the endless 'benefits' of a flexible workforce who lose opportunities of collective protection with the destruction of the stable workplace?
Posted by: Chris Purnell | June 16, 2010 at 03:08 PM
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