So where have they gone?

[nightrider]

As an add on to the "Would you employ staff" thread which I found very interesting and which went from employing staff to benefit fraud and tax evasion.

I would like to ask the intelligentsia of this group just where have all the jobs gone? When I left school in 1956 you couldn't go wrong in securing a trade apprenticeship.

Hundreds of factories, mills, and loads of small, medium to large private companies so where have they all gone? why has the work pool shrunk to virtually nothing?

You could tumble out of bed and just walk down the road to a mill, factory or workshop to your job, now you have to drive for miles to get to work.

[LordThornber]

My wifes place is a good place to start Malc. They've been trading for almost 80 years, a well run solid family business.

 

In the 1980's they employed almost 600 staff at their peak, they were slipper and shoe manufacturers. If you didn't work there, (or had done), you certainly knew someone who did. I'm sure it's an oft repeated tale in many towns.

 

But along came The Far East and it's cheap labour costs. Slowly but surely the firm just couldn't compete, the place shrunk and shrunk until around 13 years ago thay had to make almost everyone redundant. The owners, 3rd generation, were genuinely upset, and I really mean that.

 

They continued to trade with a small staff team of about 30 and turned themselves into importers of the very same shoes they'd been making to sell abroad.

 

My wife started there at this time, she said it was sad to see all the machinery being crated up to be sold to China, India, indeed anywhere with dirt cheap labour.

 

The business flourished, and has diversified well. The huge, (and I mean huge) factory has been partly let to a call centre, (cue collective groans), but at least there jobs have been created.

 

At least something was salvaged, the story cannnot be repeated for the many factories and mills in and around Blackburn sadly.

 

Martyn

[malc d]

knight of the road - 2010-10-08 9:36 AM

 

As an add on to the "Would you employ staff" thread which I found very interesting and which went from employing staff to benefit fraud and tax evasion.

I would like to ask the intelligentsia of this group just where have all the jobs gone? When I left school in 1956 you couldn't go wrong in securing a trade apprenticeship.

Hundreds of factories, mills, and loads of small, medium to large private companies so where have they all gone? why has the work pool shrunk to virtually nothing?

You could tumble out of bed and just walk down the road to a mill, factory or workshop to your job, now you have to drive for miles to get to work.

 

 

 

That's an easy one, (and I'm not even one of the intelligentsia ),

 

 

All the jobs have gone where labour is cheaper - i.e. to the east, or far east.

 

It also means of course that everything is relatively so much cheaper now than it was, but it means that the U.K is now just a big warehouse to hold tons of imports.

 

 

 

 

 

[nightrider]

It is a sad situation that we find ourselves in but what saddens me more is the ever widening division between "working class" people.

The one half that is fortunate to have jobs are forever slagging off the other half that are without jobs and calling them scroungers and scum, yes, I will admit that some of the unemployed can be described as such but they are in the minority.

In general a lot of the unemployed are decent upstanding folk who are caught in the unemployment trap through no fault of their own and who are fighting to keep their heads above water and a roof over their heads, my heart goes out to them.

Did you know that if an unemployed person has occasion to phone the welfare benefits people about his or her claim there is no direct land line? you have to dial a premium rate 0845 line which can be very costly when they put you on hold, is that fair or what? talk about hitting you when you are down.

[LordThornber]

I have no relatives or friends who are unemployed.

 

I'm a working class person who socialises across a decent cross section of society so by that token I should know or know of someone, but I don't.

 

I know some people who are unemployable, and by that I mean workshy, unwilling to retrain, or are unwilling to accept lesser paid work.

 

 

A friend who was a Manager, in a well paid role was made redundant. He couldn't find work so he coughed up £1000 to a get a HGV license and got himself a job. He earns about £6000 a year less than he did, but happy to be in work.

 

A relative who had a very well paid job with a large company, just couldn't be bothered over a long period of time to turn up for work. being a large place, they gave him every chance to redeem himself. No thanks, and has been on benefits ever since. I'm happy to report though that his benefits are being squeezed tighter and tighter.

 

A neighbour made redundant from a well paid (30 years service) job can't find work. At 63, he's unwilling to retrain, even gain some basic PC skills. I'm sympathetic about him losing his job, but either at his age with his past job security he should in my opinion, be reasonably comfortable and/or if he really wants work, to retrain or set his sights lower. But no, he's just biding his time for his state pension and living, (moaning) like the world owes him a living.

 

There are jobs out there, look at the local press and job centre. The problem is, some folk won't accept lower salaries/ national minimum wage. I'm not saying you can go and pick and choose, far from it, but there are jobs to be had.

 

Martyn

[nightrider]

I am fortunate in the fact that I have never been unemployed, in my kind of job there will always be work, but having said that I have always looked for it.

Even as a kid from the age of 10 I had my little enterprises going in order to buy sweeties and Dinky toys, couldn't ask my mum for money being a war widow she simply didn't have any.

I am 69 now and still working although not doing as much as I used to do, I think ones work ethic stems from the inside, personally I couldn't lounge about doing nothing.

[J9withdogs]

In (I think) the 1970's there was a big 'Buy British' campaign.

 

We'd be hard-pressed nowadays to find anything made in Britain to buy!

[Guest Tracker]

Maybe employment protection laws, often via the EU, have made business people wary of hiring when it can be so hard to fire ineffective employees?

[BGD]

Sometimes peoples perceptions (albeit genuine perceptions) can be very different from the truth.

 

 

 

The jobs haven't gone.

There are more jobs in the UK now than ever before.

 

But they, and the workforce, have changed.

 

There are actually far MORE people employed nowadays than in previous

years/decades/centuries. The biggest growth has of course been by women; they've entered the employment market en masse in the past 50 or so years......with the result that there are proportionally far fewer jobs for men than previously.

 

 

 

 

What's also changed enormously is job type.

The old unskilled/semi-skilled jobs in prime industries (mining, forestry, agriculture etc) and secondary industries (manufacturing) have all but died out.

But in other sectors of industry and services, and most notably in the Public Sector, there has been a massive growth in job numbers.

A few examples: retail, insurance, banking, finance, national and local government administraton, Management, distribution, import/export, Infomation technology, Council services (eg social workers etc), the NHS (which is now BY FAR the single biggest employer in the UK), etc etc.

Part-time jobs have also increased enormously.....partly because Companies want such work, and partly because a lot of employees (almost exclusively women) have asked to be part-time workers.

 

 

 

Many people bemoan the "death of UK manufacturing". But they are in fact wrong.

The UK manufacturing sector makes more (by value of output) nowadays than it ever has in the past.

But it is producing those goods FAR more efficiently than in the past.........lean production, robotics, automated lines, production engineering.

The Companies who have survived, or which have grown up in the past 10 or 20 years, are those that have swopped massively expensive and unreliable labour (ie people) for investment in (expensive to begin with, but much cheaper in the long run) automation.

 

 

I reckon there's a few honest truths that a post-industrial economy like Britain needs to understand.

We want progress........it makes the economy of a country grow, which makes its inhabitants better off, which means they have more money to spand, which means that more goods and services get bought, which drives up demand, which means more new jobs created........ the classic virtuous spiral.

 

But any country also needs to compete with all others, and several factors have acted to drive low-skilled industrial jobs out of the UK to other countries: faster transport, UK unions, UK employment costs, UK labour laws and regulation, UK unit labour costs (basically, a UK worker demands far more money/benefits for doing far less work than workers in most other countries around the world), the internet, lower taxes on Companies in other countries, etc etc.

 

In addition, UK consumers are just like consumers all over the rest of the world: selfish and greedy.

You want you TV cheap. You want your clothing cheap. You want you food cheap. etc etc etc. When given a choice between UK made (expensive) of overseas made (cheap) products, the VAST majority of consumers buy the cheaper product.

People can't have it both ways......and as a group they'll never choose expensive things, "because it might help keep some bloke in work in a factory in Bradford". They'll always go for cheap "even though it was made in a sweat shop by child labour in Thailand".

 

 

 

 

 

Thus the chances of getting (and of keeping for any significant length of time) well paid work if all you've got to offer is muscle (ie unskilled labour) is now zilch.

The chances of getting such work if you only know an "old trade" is almost zero too. Because there are almost no old trade jobs left.

 

Britain is now a knowledge-based economy. Your value to an employer is based upon what you know, new skills (eg I.T. or a foreign language), ability to understand complex organisational tasks, to interact well with customers/suppliers, to be accurate, to be trustworthy, etc.

So, get yourself a degree in medicine, law, business management, finance & accounting, logistics, French or German or Spanish or Mandarin Chinese, design & technology, and (if you have the other personality traits required too, and are prepared to travel within the UK and abroad, and to relocate if necessary) you can achieve a fantastically well paid and well-rewarded career.

 

 

 

 

[nightrider]

Those people who may be young enough to adapt and change to modern technology may be ok, but it looks as though its going to be a hard time for those in their 50's unfortunately.

I have done ok in my working career, never quite made the millionaire status but not complaining, there is work to be found but not on the scale as when I first left school, new types of work have replaced a lot of the old type of work but how many people can adapt and change?

The modern day work pool puts me in mind of those big lakes in Africa that evaporate in the drought where all the fish are swirling and flapping round to keep out of the harsh sunlight, just like people trying to find somewhere to slot into today, glad I'm well out of the labour market.

[hymerwoman]

BGD, THERE ARE MORE JOBS IN THE UK THAN EVER BEFORE.

 

I think that the sun in Spain has got to your head.

 

Come back to England and try and find one, yes there are some jobs but not full time ones and if you do not have any reason to be able to claim benefits then minimum wage it is.

 

Try living on that as a single person.

[nightrider]

The people who are forever saying that there are plenty of jobs to be had are usually those who are fortunate to be in work or have retired on a good pension.

Part time working is now the norm, not enough to keep you in reasonable comfort.

BGD who has retired to Spain probably on a good pension and possibly cash from the sale of a home over here might be in a good situation and seeing as he does not live over here is not really qualified on saying how good things are here, because they are not.

[Guest pelmetman]

I remember as a kid my dad always had an apprentice or two in the shop, in those days they where indentured so had to turn up on time apply them selves to the task and after 5 years with a certain amount of time at college they qualified as a hairdresser :-D

 

Now days its 6 months, if your lucky at college (lol) and you dont even need any qualifications to set up as a hairdresser *-)

 

People wonder why they get their scalps burnt when they have hair treatments *-) probably if they had done the old fashioned training and learnt how to use the chemicals properly it might not happen :D As the chemicals are dangerous and can be used to make bombs :D

 

But over the years the apprenticeship was replaced by clever educated people, who also introduced more and more legislation that forced the skilled uneducated to retreat from taking on apprentices as the paperwork became to much of a odious a task *-) Leaving more work for the teachers >:-)

Reminds of a saying "those that can do, those that can't teach" >:-)

 

So in summary the kids that used to leave school with out any exams used to be standard fodder for the apprenticeship route, but nowdays that has all gone :-( So the no hope'rs have no hope *-)

[Brian Kirby]

No, Bruce is generalising, and he is right.  He does not say there are jobs for all on demand, he is saying that a higher percentage of the UK's total population that ever before is employed.  As he says, that is largely because of the number of women who have entered the workforce over the past 40 or so years.  That does not mean unemployment is low, just that despite the level of unemployment the number of people with jobs is still high, relative to earlier times.  That translates to double income households, where both partners work - mainly to buy their home, the price of which has risen beyond the buying power of a single income for many families.

It's the last bit of Bruce's post that is the worry.  What this implies, I think correctly, is that unless you have the ability to get a good degree, or other attainment of equivalent type, your earning prospects are going to be savagely reduced.  Men used to work machines.  Now, to a great extent, computers work machines, and men (or women) merely programme the computer to control the machine to produce the workpiece.  Once programmed, and provided the machine has its feedstock assured, it will go on churning out the same item, to the same close tolerances, day and night, without fail.  Apart from some specialised maintenance of the machine, and a bit of cleaning, the job is inputting the production parameters and not controlling the machine.  This translates across many sectors and presents us, as a society, with a huge problem.  These new jobs are, as Bruce's post implies, require trained numerate, literate, logical thinkers.  Put bluntly, that excludes quite a proportion of the population.  So, what are all those people who used to do the skilled and unskilled manual jobs now to do for a living.  They can't all become HGV drivers and policemen!  :-)

The one bit of light, which may be the end of the tunnel, but may just be that train coming the other way, is that there seems to be growing social unrest and job dissatisfaction in those countries that have taken over much of the manual production work from the more developed economies.  If that continues, with demands for higher pay, their cost advantages will be eroded somewhat and, with upward pressure on the cost of their goods as their currencies strengthen, plus the extended and costly supply chain from the far east, the economics of home production may become more attractive.  However that may play out, it seems traditional manual employment is unlikely to return to its previous levels.  Those most affected, mainly male and young, will become very disruptive socially unless suitably occupied.  The question is, doing what, exactly?

[nightrider]

"Those mostly effected, mainly male and young, will become very disruptive socially unless suitably occupied" that is already happening and will get worse as time goes on.

No matter what anyone says the workpool is shrinking with machines and technology being able to do the work that most men used to do and we are fast becoming a leisure society because there will be no work to do.

But there will always be the type of people about that will always shout and ball that there are people being paid to sit on their backsides (welfare benefit claimants)

So is that such a bad thing that machines do all the work and produce our food? pretty soon there will be a growth industry of so called professionals teaching the great unwashed how to occupy their minds when they have nothing to do? The government might even give the general public free caravans and motorhomes to get them out and about to take their minds off things :-D