Youth unemployment is now reaching horrible levels but the idea that this can be blamed on the present government is blatantly unfair.
For years now jobs have been off-shored and globalisation means that the UK cannot compete in many areas due to the high costs of doing business here (labour costs, commercial rents, business rates etc.).
Immigration cannot be ignored either with hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of jobs now taken by EU nationals.
In my last proper job the IT department was full of Indians working on a sub-contract basis for consultancies ("too many chiefs and too many Indians!" as a workmate comically put it).
These problems were hidden for many years because of the 'good times' created by the credit boom, but they were always going to surface sooner or later.
I'm not sure what my point is here because a solution is no easy task. What do others think?...
Unemployment
I think we're screwed unless we change as a nation (and even then!).
Compare Britain with China.
They have an increasingly educated workforce (and I'm talking about vocational courses, not media studies degrees), and their workforce is willing to work at a fraction of the wages of ours.
And I bet Chinese firms aren't tied up in red tape.
So who is likely to be able to produce the cheapest widgets?
And if you were a global firm looking to build a new factory, where would you build it?
If we're not exporting stuff or receiving investment from abroad, where is the money with which to grow our economy going to come from?
BTW, this is a very interesting article about the employment situation in the US, which has parallels with our situation: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-future-work
Jeff
Compare Britain with China.
They have an increasingly educated workforce (and I'm talking about vocational courses, not media studies degrees), and their workforce is willing to work at a fraction of the wages of ours.
And I bet Chinese firms aren't tied up in red tape.
So who is likely to be able to produce the cheapest widgets?
And if you were a global firm looking to build a new factory, where would you build it?
If we're not exporting stuff or receiving investment from abroad, where is the money with which to grow our economy going to come from?
BTW, this is a very interesting article about the employment situation in the US, which has parallels with our situation: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-future-work
Jeff
-
superfrank
- Posts: 2762
- Joined: Fri Aug 14, 2009 8:28 pm
financial services (bust), borrowing (bust), consumer spending (bust) and rising house prices (bust).Ferru123 wrote:If we're not exporting stuff or receiving investment from abroad, where is the money with which to grow our economy going to come from?
the economic model has failed. the only new money is coming from the BoE printing presses and we know where that ends.
110,000 seek Christmas post jobs
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/busin ... 62893.html