Blog
Soft landing for the labour market
11th July 2008
Paul Mason’s superb blog “Idle Scrawl” on the Newsnight website asks whether the UK labour market will prove to be more resilient that expected in the face of a downturn.
In one scenario, the brunt of the job losses are felt by migrant workers who may already be looking to head home in large numbers. There are also millions of hours of overtime that can be cut by employers anxious not to curtail their payroll if it means losing skilled workers they spent time and money recruiting in the first place. Another factor to bear in mind is the positive employment impact of major infrastructural projects such as Cross Rail and London 2012 which will kick in over the next couple of years.
And finally, the true test of a flexible labour market is how it responds to difficult economic times - specifically whether workers who may lose their jobs have enough geographical and occupational mobility to find fresh employment reasonsably quickly. In contrast to the mass unemployment of the early 1980s and 1990s, Paul’s piece is guardedly optimistic. And in a week when the papers have been full of headlines of thousands of workers facing redundancy, it is a welcome counterweight to the general gloom and doom.
He writes: “large parts of UK industry and services have a more skilled and versatile workforce than 25 years ago.”
See also: “Flexible workers bend unemployment trend” (Telegraph)
Geoff Riley
Geoff Riley FRSA has been teaching Economics for over thirty years. He has over twenty years experience as Head of Economics at leading schools. He writes extensively and is a contributor and presenter on CPD conferences in the UK and overseas.