18 May 2010

Unemployment benefits "too high & discourage job seeking"?

Last week, I brought you some of the detail from the recently published Scottish Social Attitudes Survey. Much there of interest for those concerned with the authority of devolved institutions, but concerning notes on women's faith in the capacity of the Scottish Government to reach fair decisions. Concerning material too for Iain Gray's on the efficacy of his anti-Eck rhetoric on health and the state of the public finances. If the findings of the survey are to be believed, Scottish Labour may face significant difficulties tacking Sturgeon and Swinney to the wall with their storied tales of Salmond slumps and SNP cuts. Voters seem minded to follow the public penny from spending back to its source. Like Theseuses, lost and befuddled in the midst of a maze of competing claims about final responsibility for economic downturns, they pluck on the financial threads and follow the skein of Scotland's block grant back to Westminster. Unlike our Greek hero, who escaped Daedalus' labyrinth by following Ariadne's thread, Scottish voters find themselves faced with the plump spider's figure of the Chancellor of the UK Exchequer.  Some stop here and set about accusing the Westminster government - still others press onward and lay the blame, finally, with the occult forces of the global economy. Very few seem disposed to share the conclusion which the bull-headed, charging Gray invites them to reach, that an SNP government with extremely limited economic powers is primarily responsible.

One finding which I didn't mention but which is worth lingering over concerns recorded attitudes to unemployment benefits. Here is a reproduction of Table A.13 from the survey:


1999
2000
2001
2003
2006
2009

%
%
%
%
%
%
Too low and cause hardship
36
43
45
41
33
31
Too high and discourage job seeking
33
28
26
32
39
42
Neither
22
17
16
16
18
17
Other response
3
7
6
5
3
5
Don’t know
5
6
7
7
6
5
Not answered
*
-
-
*
*
-
Total respondents
1482
1663
1605
1508
1594
1482














Although the shifting direction of opinion since 1999 can be seen from the foregoing arrangement of columns, a tidy little graph visualises the developments in Figure 3.4, which I've replicated below. Just click on the image for a clearer view.


An important question which the researchers could have asked the respondents is - on your understanding, what is the weekly amount of jobseeker's allowance paid to the unemployed? And equally importantly -  what level income seems to you the minimum acceptable amount per week? Think about this yourself, if you are not familiar with the first figure. Just how much do you think it is? In a recent  Guardian article, also picked up by Joan McAlpine, David Conn suggests that in his experience, folk tend to answer around £100 a week or so. A look at the government figures, however, hastily disabuses you of such preconceptions. The maximum weekly figures vary depending on one's status. Single people aged under 25 receive £51.85. The seven-day benefit  for singletons older than 25 leaps to the dizzy heights of £65.45. Lone parents receive exactly the same amount.

It is a dominant theme of this week - but the devil really is in the detail and justice is in small places, close to home. Gusty rhetoric and hymns to the crowned, winged goddess Fairness will mean next to bugger all to those scratching out a living of amazing niggardliness on the penury of Jobseeker's Allowance. Yet increasingly, the Social Attitude Survey seems to suggest that many Scots have been distracted by dominant discourses that the unemployed are a tawdry band of lazy shirkers, idlers and would-be apprentices to the leech-craft of the professional and permanent state beneficiary. Labour must bear the great weight of responsibility for fostering this distorted attitude while neglecting the substantive, significant figures. It is  scandalous. That's why it is a pity that the survey didn't attempt to gauge the level of benefits which its respondents apprehended  were paid or challenge them with the actual level of money which this pinching paternalistic allowance allots to those who have lost their jobs.

How many of those who thought benefits were too high would be shocked, as their vague notions sharply impact with the reality? Faced with the figures, certainly, some die-hard opponents might well still insist that such benefits are pandering and unproductive. I would hope, however, that civil conscience would prevail in many, many more instances, when people realised the true levels of benefit paid to those out of work. Given the new coalition's disposition towards airiness and grand narratives, we can anticipate much skirting over of these concrete figures in the months and years to come. We must insistently, time and time again, throw the detail back in their faces, niggle at their good consciences and prick the noisy declarations of their own virtue and their much vaunted Fairness. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, as they say.

6 comments :

  1. Father MacKenzie18 May 2010 at 14:32

    While I agree with that JSA is too low, a 25 year old, living in a one bedroom flat in Glasgow can claim a maximum of £9616.62 in JSA, housing benefit and council tax benefit and if he was to take a full time (35 hour) job on minimum wage he would have £9,371.09 to take home after taxes.

    Not only are they £245.53 better off not working, but an unemployed man currently receives ancillary benefits not available to someone who is working such as free prescriptions.

    With our current system, benefits can be higher than minimum wage discouraging job-seeking, but they are also so low that they cause hardship for many, because so is the minimum wage.

    Those working in the system are aware that this, and the bureaucracy of the system act as barriers to people taking up gainful employment.

    For example, 4th, 5th and 6th year pupils are currently on exam leave, and when I was a 4th, 5th and 6th year pupil I was offered a job with the council mowing the lawns of the elderly etc. The council looked (and I imagine still looks) for its temporary staff at the school gates partly because a person on benefits would be loathe to take such a job.

    Even though it paid better than minimum wage (£6.50 back when minimum wage was £3.80, I don't know how they pay now) it is paid monthly in arrears, meaning that last payment of £130 from the job centre has to last an extra 14 days, and the landlord and council will probably both end up missing a payment.

    The lawns will stop needing cut, and the council will thank you for your time, around the same point in time that you will stop being emergency taxed, and then you will have 8 weeks with no income as you reapply for all your benefits.

    This is going to become a much greater problem as more and more vacancies are advertised as 12-13 week contracts with the employer having an option to keep you on.

    Until these vagaries are addressed, simply increasing or decreasing the amount of Jobseeker's Allowance isn't going to change anything.

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  2. I know several pensioners who live on £65 a week or less without receiving any help from the state. They are usually widowed women who have not paid full contributions and their working lives have been interrupted several times for one reason or another. Many refuse to claim pension credit as they feel it is a form of charity and as long as they can meet their utility bills and feed themselves they would never admit they're poor.

    Some are not poor as they purchased their homes years ago, but cannot face the thought of moving to a tiny flat or house.

    Quite a dilemma when the youth, elderly and genuine unemployed are, in a country which produces oil, are involved in a system which is so outdated.

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  3. Interesting post. As one who is - sorry was - receiving that above mentioned magnificent sum - lets not forget that for me it's only available for 6 months I can indeed confrm that surviving on it is a bugger of a job. Once my contribution based JSA was exhausted, because my wife has the temerity to work it was stopped and no benefits are applicable, because as a careful laddie I had arranged mortgage and credit card payment protection insurance, at my own cost of course, which is all taken as income when looking at any potential beefit. This has excluded me from any small reduction in council tax for instance.

    Tis a bugger of enormous proportions when you apparently fall just outside of any available safety nets.

    Anyone want to buy a house????

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  4. Your point is well taken, Fr MacKenzie. The whole edifice of welfare entitlements are connected to one another - and to an extent have to be seen in the context of one another. I did my weather best to avoid chipping into that particular nest of hornets and their buzzing, confusing detail - but you are right to do so and set out some of the difficulties clearly. I'm not in the position to evaluate the figures you mention - reason enough for me to look more deeply into the complexities in future. I appreciate the contribution.

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  5. Pensioner poverty is also a serious concern, Subrosa. One wonders about how demographic changes might affect the category of people you describe, if more women in future generations have more consistent contributions and stable working lives. Not that this is an answer to your friends' predicaments. Although that prideful refusal to accept pension credit seems clearly contrary to their own interests - I can very much understand the reluctance you outline. Indeed, no doubt the system in some measure depends on those entitled persons who nevertheless eschew their benefits and if everyone turned up insisting on their due, the bureaucracies and accounts would be rather strained.

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  6. Unfortunately, I'm not in the market for a new house and home at present Alistair. Unless you are willing to accept a crumb of bread and a scratch of cheese for it (subject to survey, naturally).

    Sorry to hear about your difficulties with the JSA, as a case in point.

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