Thursday, Dec 18, 2008
It's not all bad news.This will make you feel better
Mail: Recession? Not in the public sector where state workers are unscathed
Private sector workers are losing their jobs in record numbers but the public sector is still booming, official figures revealed yesterday.
The number of private sector workers plunged 128,000 in just three months, the biggest fall ever recorded.
But workers in the public sector emerged unscathed from the worst economic meltdown since the First World War.
Posted by plato @ 12:01 PM (1150 views) Add Comment
29 Comments
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1. alan said...
Hey, its great to have so many people in the public sector looking after us!
Does anyone know how we are going to pay for all these folk in 2009? Just looking at Woolworths, that's 27,000 less people on PAYE.
2. paul said...
And 27,000 workers who have little hope of getting back into work quickly, hence at least 20,000 of them claiming job seekers.
3. mark wadsworth said...
It's all awful, but what's worse is that there aren't (as the Mail contends) 5.9 million on the public payroll, it's slightly more than 8 million if you include all the quangoes and consultants and people like GPs and university lecturers who technically aren't civil servants.
That's more than one-in-four workers, for crying out loud, it was bad enough when the Tories got chucked out when we had 6 million such people.
Only about a million of them are doing proper stuff, like teachers, nurses, coppers etc, then there are street sweepers, lollipop ladies and maybe half of the rest are doing something useful (payroll ladies, catering, caretakers, whatever), but that still leaves three million doing sweet fanny adams for large salaries plus pensions.
We could chuck in another couple of hundred thousand in the quasi-nationalised banks as well, I suppose.
4. S2r2005 said...
it would be very interesting to see some rigourous analysis of the productivity (or not) of public sector staff and net gain to society rather than daily-mailisms.
and then a comparison with the private sector.
5. mrmickey said...
It does seem as if were living in the USSR every day. I expect we'll all end up working in Tractor factory number 7 if we can ever get industry off the ground again.
6. last_days_of_disco said...
Ah, its good to see workshy Britain is booming while all the people who actually worked for a living are losing their jobs. For crying out loud, the folks at Woolworths at least tried to make a success of their business. After watching how the NHS allowed routine hygiene to fail and started explaining it using terms like "super-bug". Imagine what comes next? I think the public sector is ultimately going to be sacrificed, there is no other way and its about time.
7. I Want A House said...
Two words...
Not surprised.
8. matt_the_hat said...
I went to the GP the other day complaining of an old injury and within an hour I was in & out of the hospital having had an xray, the GP said he could make an assessment without the xray image - this was not even a serious case - can anyone tell me how long that would take in the UK
9. Eternal Sceptic said...
Be interesting to see how all these bloated public sector salaries get paid, when all the real jobs have evaporated.
Oh of course- crash gordon will just fire up the printing presses. Must be using Mugabe as a role model.
Probably be an outbreak of avian flu instead of cholera though.
10. Crashwatcher said...
It was privately owned business that got us into this mess. Lets hope pubic business can get us out of it.
11. Crashwatcher said...
Yes lets get rid of these useless teachers and doctors that way we would have more money to spend in more shops selling tatt.
12. tyrellcorporation said...
In 'deprived' areas of the country 70% of employed people are working for the State - far higher than communist Russia in the 70's and 80's.
My mates who work in the public sector get approx 60 days off a year once they add in their flexi-time arrangements. So far this year I've had 5 days off! I currently don't save for a pension as all my money goes on day-to-day living expenses and running my business. My mate's pension pot will be worth in the region of £700,000 when he retires in about 10 years time - mine currently is about £20k (from previous schemes). He has a 100% secure job and I live with the constant threat of zero income through loss of orders.
There is NO incentive whatsoever to work in the private sector anymore. Like the end of the Ottoman empire, all the best people are now being drawn inexorably towards working for the State as the State offers far-and-away the best employment terms and prospects. What this means for the future of this once great country is self evident. We have one of the highest emmigration rates of any developed nation and those people leaving are highly qualified and motivated. They don't see a future in the UK. Those who are left clamour to work for the State. Hardly the dynamic economy/society Brown & Co have been banging on about ad nauseam for the last decade.
13. maddison said...
What really annoys me is the fact that public sector (white collar/professional) workers moan so much about how little they get paid and not appreciated etc etc. They seem to forget they that a good pension, long holidays, not taking responsibility, job for life, is worth alot of money!!
14. Natasha's Dad said...
I have just left the Public sector because the writing is on the wall- yes, I left despite the final salary pension scheme
There wil be lots of Public sector job losses in 2009 ; you heard it here first !
15. drewster said...
Agree with all the above. It's a serious problem in the historically poorer parts of the UK. In Northern Ireland some 60% of jobs are in the public sector.
I just wish those extra 2m workers had been employed building new railways, tram lines, and tube lines - instead of non-jobs.
16. letthemfall said...
It's there in the Mail: it must be the truth.
17. mountain goat said...
The usual civil servant bashing from members of this site. If being a civil servant is so well-paid and stress-free why don't you become one yourself? Anyone want to be a GP, nurse, teacher? Thought not, because what you have written above is nonsense. Most of these jobs are low paid and stressful, due to 1. endless impossible government targets devised by other beaurocrats and 2. ungrateful public like you lot. .
18. mark wadsworth said...
@ MTH - most of a day?
@ Mountain Goat, nobody's complaing about "GP, nurse, teacher", but these people make up barely one million out of eight million. Nobody's complaining about school dinner ladies, dustbin men, caretakers either (who don't earn much)
We're complaining about all the quangista on salaries of £100k plus generous pension; the five-a-day-advisors and so on.
19. mountain goat said...
Mark Wadsworth - compared to Europe our civil service is not bloated. Lots of jobs like those I mentioned and police, social services etc are heavily criticised, thankless tasks and I don't like seeing the regular slagging off of these people that goes on. When things go wrong in society, BabyP etc, it is these people that often get blamed, and not the perpetrators.
20. tyrellcorporation said...
Mountain Goat public sector pay is also 17% above comparable private sector jobs - not my stats but Government stats.
21. Chilli said...
60 million people in the country - lets just arbitrarily say the average age of death is 70. Retirement age: 63.
Now if we arbitrarily assume the age of first employment is 21. That leaves 70-7-21 = 42 working years. Against 28 non-working years. Assuming an equidistribution among the populace:
60 million /70*42 = 36 million of use should be working.
Of which 8 million of us are working for the public sector.
So that's 22% of us.
Nothing like those 'free market' forces at play.
Anyway, I'm being too generous with some of my assumptions I'm sure.
Btw the average GP salary is 104k pa.
I'm all for having doctors in society, but surely these guys can work in the private sector. Private doctors doesn't necessarily mean private health care.
22. drewster said...
mg - "Compared to Europe..." - Just because your neighbour never mowes his lawn, doesn't make it ok to never mow yours too! By that reasoning, Gordon will soon be saying "compared to Zimbabwe..." (and I hate the Zimbabwe comparison)
mg - "Anyone want to be a GP, nurse, teacher..." - YES they do! Medical schools turn away tens of thousands of potential student doctors each year. Teachers in many subjects can't find jobs - I've worked with two ex-teachers who simply couldn't find work. Finally - the head webmaster of a local authority once told me that the most popular part of their website, by far, was the jobs section. So yes lots of people want those cushy public sector jobs!
Mark Wadsworth as usual you are very right. The doctors and teachers are the good guys; it's the other two million non-jobs that are of concern. I'm sure your Land Value Tax could put a fair few Inland Revenue people into more productive jobs too.
23. Kruador said...
@tyrellcorporation: define 'comparable'. Also check that you're looking at medians and not means - public and private sector pay are both distorted by very highly paid workers at the top end. Commonly, that's that government brings someone in from the private sector at higher than his private sector wage - 'he's run company X for years, he must be good'. Rubbish.
Mountain Goat is right - the Civil Service is actually insufficiently staffed and funded for the most part. Remember that 'key workers' weren't able to afford mortgages in the bubble, hence the number of programmes trying to house them (normally a) failing to work and b) pushing up prices even further). In fact you can point the BabyP case quite heavily towards *understaffed* social services.
If people lose their jobs, it means that the tasks they were performing can no longer be performed. Sometimes people lose their jobs because the task is no longer required, or not as much is required. In a recession with high unemployment and higher priority, *more* people will be needed to service their welfare needs, not fewer.
24. Dillardpruitt said...
drewster etc
Which 'others' are you talking about which are non-jobs? I'm not sure you even know, although i guess in your head you've got some back office person who because you personally can't see what they do that means the job is a waste. You've complained about the cushy jobs of teachers, doctors etc then stated that they are the good guys (even though you could say that it's the likes of GPs with their extremely generous new contracts that have been milking the system)?
Actually the growth of the public sector in recent years has been largely a result of expansion in the fields of health, education and policing ('public administration' numbers have increased but nowhere near on the scale that some would imagine). We could do without these people...get rid of teaching assistants for example... but you would have to make some fairly hard choices. Hence the difficulties for governments who come into power saying they are going to chop out the deadwood.
Although many who contribute on this site seem pretty switched on there is quite often an element of knee jerk populism that's not particularly attractive, or thoughtful.
25. crash bandicoot said...
Since Mrs Bandicoot is a nurse I'll discuss this part of the civil service here. The problem with the NHS is the petty beaurocracy and target driven mentality. Partly this is driven by 60 years of internal conflict leading to seriously entrenced positions. Partly it is because of the job for life mentality where poor quality staff are retained - and even progress through the ranks - because that's the way things happen here. Partly it is because of a lack of care about money wasteage, there'll be more next year anyway. And one of the main problems is that this is all underpinned by the last remaining fragments of the trade union network. If you saw the Gerry and the NHS show on TV then you'll be familiar with most of this anyway. If these attitudes prevail throught the whole public sector ( as I expect they do) then there is a collosal waste of money taking place.
26. Archiejc said...
Mr Bandicoot - I work in the NHS too and you are right. But with reference to postings in general, we need to be careful in making generalisations. Wasteful public sector policy is very much driven from the top down. The same wasteful bureaucracy that is burning away public funds is also making life hell for a lot of staff in front line public services. It's a labour intensive sector, with high headcounts simply because of the volume of work. Spend a day with an NHS nurse, a typical hospital consultant, or alternatively a mental health outreach worker, a probation officer or a social worker. The list is endless. But it's the same game - chipping away at the coalface dealing with 'clients'. They are often demanding and pretty demoralising roles to be in. And I don't mean demanding clients in the usual business sense - I mean the huge numbers of sick, mentally ill, deprived, drug-addicted, offenders... in case people haven't noticed they are all around you. Understaffing is almost the norm with much higher levels of stress-related illness than the private sector (until recently of course!) And job security is not what you'd think either, because of constant restructuring (not as bad as the private sector now, granted, but the shock wave will pass to the public sector soon enough).
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