People will hurt your
feelings — deal with it
Libby Purves
Page 27
Our approach to employment isn’t working
While the jobless count is at a record low, the government must urgently tackle the stream of over-fifties retiring early
Comment
Jacob Rees-Mogg is precisely the
opposite of what’s needed to address
our labour market problems.
Demanding a full-time return to the
office just won’t work, for workers or
the economy. Every fiftysomething
put off a return to work takes Britain
another step towards the sort of
inactivity levels found in countries
whose economic record ministers
like to scorn. The French, still
clinging to a retirement age of 62,have an inactivity rate of 27 per cent.
Britain’s is 22 per cent, but rising.
That rise must be stopped, in part
by making work a nicer, less arduous
experience more compatible with
other parts of our lives. Instead of
“back to work” lectures, government
should support and encourage
employers offering innovative
approaches. A four-day week isn’t an
economic silver bullet, but it’s the
sort of change that can make work
more tolerable and so ensure there
are people willing to do it. And if we
won’t fix social care, we must accept
that means finding ways to make it
easier for people to work while also
looking after elderly parents.James Kirkup is director of the Social
Market FoundationClare Foges is awayhaving to accept that money alone
isn’t enough for twentysomethings
who also want flexibility, time and —
whisper it — happiness at work.
To older workers — I’m 46 — that
can seem almost alien. Conditioned
by that cultural fear of
unemployment, we tend to think
we’re lucky to have a job at all, so we
just have to accept any and all of the
burdens that come with it. But the
exodus of the over-fifties from the
workforce suggests attitudes are
shifting and people are concluding
that the daily grind just isn’t worth it,
that time is worth more than money.
An Office for National Statistics
study of inactive over-fifties found
that what’s most likely to tempt them
back to work isn’t more money, it’s
flexible and remote working. In
other words, work isn’t working, and
the Gradgrindian presenteeism ofThe Tories’ 1978 anti-Labour slogan
has been recycled endlessly sincerepeated failures to make our social
care system work.
Losing so many over-fifties from
work is bad news. Their experience
and skills can make them more
productive, and the UK needs every
boost to productivity it can get. And
people leaving the workforce early
contradicts necessary efforts to raise
the retirement age and help us all to
work longer as lifespans rise.
The inactivity story has been a
two-way street, however: women in
their thirties and forties have become
more economically active over the
past couple of years. Partly that’s
because roles in which a lot of
women are employed, such as
administration, have expanded. But
crucially it’s also because remote and
flexible working make it easier to
combine work with childcare.
The potential benefits of changing
working norms need more attention,
because the experience of work has
been getting worse for many people
for several years. What economists
call “work intensity” (put simply,
how tough is your working day?) has
risen over the past decade. Emails
that never stop pinging; frequent
training for higher skills; contracts
and management practices that give
workers less autonomy over how and
when they work. All are theorised as
causes of British work becoming
tougher and less enjoyable.
Here, readers of a certain age and
disposition may shrug and ask: so
what? Work isn’t meant to be fun, we
do it for money, not pleasure. As a
devout believer in the Calvinist work
ethic, I understand that view. But I
also acknowledge that work
becoming ever more intensive and
demanding may be driving away
many of the workers we need.
Big graduate recruiters already
know this. Even banks and law firms
offering huge salaries to new hires areY
ou don’t need to have your
holiday flights cancelled to
appreciate that something is
going wrong in the British
labour market. Everywhere,
there are signs that we don’t have
enough workers to do the jobs the
economy needs. Not that you’ll hear
much about this from politicians,
always happier fighting the last war
than thinking about the next.
Unemployment is embedded in
Britain’s political imagination. The
Tories’ “Labour Isn’t Working” poster
was unveiled in 1978 but is still
routinely invoked and copied.
Politicians fixate on unemployment
because they respond to our own
fears: for most of us, losing a job and
being out of work are distressing
prospects. No wonder the
government is always talking about
our record low unemployment (3.8
per cent) and the number of people
in work (32.6 million). But, as so
often, that’s the wrong issue.
The real story of Britain’s labour
market isn’t unemployment, it’s
inactivity. We’ve lost hundreds of
thousands of people from the labour
force and unless we find ways to
lure them back, our recovery from
our current troubles will be even
slower and sadder.
“Inactive” people don’t figure in
the unemployment statistics because
they’re not available for work.
That can be because they’re sick,
studying, caring or retired. Before
the pandemic, Britain’s inactivity rate
had been falling, slowly but steadily,
for more than 30 years. Since Covid
struck, it has been rising. If even
some of that rise proves permanent,
it is likely to be the most important
economic legacy of the virus.
There could be almost 1 million
fewer economically active people in
the UK today than we might have had
if pre-pandemic trends had continued.
That missing million is made up of
different groups with different traits.
Foreign passports aren’t really one of
them, though: the government’s
quietly liberal immigration policy
has helped to keep migrant labour
flowing into Britain. Instead, those
missing workers are Brits. Some are
students who have chosen to stay on
at university rather than start their
careers in such turbulent times. They
will join the workforce in time.
There is no such certainty for the
300,000 and more who have joined
the long-term sick. We may want to
forget the pandemic, but those
unable to work because of long
Covid or mental health problemsexacerbated by recent turmoil don’t
have that luxury. Both conditions
need more understanding and
support, in the workplace and in
wider society.
The most interesting of the
missing workers are the older ones.
About 600,000 people over 50 have
left the workforce since early 2020.
Many of them have gone off sick,
but others have simply decided to
retire early, sometimes tapping into
pension pots that become accessible
at 55. Others still have given up
work to care for family members,
including elderly parents: yet another
consequence of the crisis caused byAbout 600,000 people
over 50 have left the
workforce since 2020
Demanding a full-time
return to the office
won’t work for anyone
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Kirkupthe times | Monday June 13 2022 25