More focus required on job retention

Commenting on the rise of 131,000 in the number of people out of work between September and November 2008, the rise in redundancies and the fall in the number of vacancies, Chris Ball, Chief Executive of TAEN –The Age and Employment Network, says:

ìEven though these figures could have been even worse, job prospects are truly grim at the moment for anyone who has been made unemployed, or who is already out of work. Those, like older workers, who find it harder to get jobs even in good times, are likely to find it the most tough to get back into work.
If they are among the first to go too, it will be especially harsh for them.

ìIn the short-term, the Government must step up its focus on helping people to remain in work. Once they are out of a job, people in their fifties and sixties are likely to be out of work for a considerable while.

ìAs we all know, the government intervened when the banks faced collapse. Strong, interventionist measures should be taken to protect jobs in a similar way. Knowledge, skills and productive capacity – the crystallised value residing in good, trained workforces, is a precious thing and damaging in the extreme when lost in swingeing job cuts. Preventing the devastation of businesses and organisations should be an equal priority of government and requires strong, creative solutions.

ìAs with the bank rescue, the Government must be prepared do what a few months ago would have been unthinkable in terms of supporting employers to keep their employees in place.

Measures to be considered for introduction should include:

Even more pressure on banks to open up credit lines to businesses.

Reductions or cuts in NICs and corporation tax for employers putting people on short-time or allowing them to go on sabbaticals in the short-term.

Giving extensions on VAT and NICs payments to businesses – or turning them into loans and charging interest on them.

Making bad debt insurance available and affordable for businesses.

Introducing payment-term protection and enforcement so that companies are not squeezed by others unilaterally when deciding to lengthen their payment performance.

A job preserving agenda is called for because saving jobs is better and easier than curing unemployment and will help Britain recover from the recession much better. If companies can offer time out to employees for secondments, sabbaticals and retraining, with the security of a job to return to, it will help Britain to recover faster from the recession.

ìWhen vacancies have fallen so dramatically and recruitment freezes have been imposed or are being kept in place to see whether economic conditions worsen or pick-up, everything possible must be done to keep people in work – and help must be given to those who have fallen out of it.

ìA few months ago, forecasts of three million unemployed by Christmas 2009 were seen as extreme and far too pessimistic. Now the opposite seems to be the case and this figure looks conservative – unless all possible measures are taken to preserve, and create, jobs.î

* In percentage terms, unemployment has risen faster over the three months (Sept-Nov 2008) for those aged between 50 and state pension age ( 11.9% or 31,000) to 289,000.
The same applies for the year on year figures which are up by 50,000 ( 21.1%).