The Resolution Foundation has just updated its quarterly earnings outlook data. These two graphs come from their microsite on this subject:
And:
The latter, for the record, shows the number of staff receiving off the job training in the previous four weeks on a rolling average basis. This was 10.1% in December 2000 and 6.9% in September 2016.
If you want an explanation for the first graph it's in the second. We just don't invest enough in people in this country.
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It has been blatantly obvious that the quality of education has been allowed to falter and most schools now seem to excel at churning out people to push buttons on computers.
Now that the Education system is under threat of losing grant money I really do wonder where our ‘lords and masters’ think our future workers are going to come from. The link between employer and employee and the loyalty between them has been delibrately broken with the privitisations and the attacks on unions.
There is no premium for good work and there is no recogition for a job well done. If the employer doesnt care or notice perhaps they would like to explain why anybody else should care. The old phrase’ pay peanuts, get monkeys comes to mind.
Quite so.
I’ve always felt neoliberalism is partly to blame, thinking as it does, of labour as a commodity in a market. Workers are not worth investing in because you might have to get rid of them or they might be poached and then you get no return on your ‘investment’. You just want labour to be always available and arrive when you want it – perfectly formed and fit for purpose.
There maybe a number of dynamics at work here.
1) Lack of real growth in the economy meaning that companies are still cutting
back and consolidating rather than expanding. A symptom of stupid austerity.
2) A realisation that people are expensive – technology is increasingly
displacing people – consumers decide and shop online and work can be done
between computers who link us to cheaper workers employed abroad.
The feeling I get is that this country is entering into a period of extreme post-Fordism that also extends into the service sector.
As for this Government, they are being harder on those out of work, those with disabilities and those who have children. Reduce these people by discouraging them from existing than you can also debase the tax base and also argue for lower if not nil taxes. Tory nirvana!!
The truth may be that they just do not see the need of so many people anymore but they do not have the guts to come out and say “Look – we simply don’t need that many people anymore – stop having kids”. They would rather nudge us to that conclusion whilst saying that they have empathy with ‘hard working families’.
This also ties in neatly for the Tory love of ‘inward investment’ to make the country appear affluent.
I accept that my view might be a trite extreme – but even the new Chancellor admitted recently that he had reduced the living standards of loads of people with his latest cuts. Such callousness can often be attributed to people who believe that they are doing the right thing to make change happen.
There is an underlying systemic problem with capitalism in that, at a macro level, it’s simply not generating enough real wealth (surplus value) to meet the investment criteria of the entrepreneurial class and aspirational needs of the population. Monetaryist policies – QE, zero (negative) interest rates etc, further aggravated by austerity, have shiftd the flow of wealth into assets and the rentier economy, which doesn’t put disposible income into the pockets of the many. Hence, there is little incentive to invest in people as a source of wealth creation for the owners of capital. Why would they? Richer pickings for the 1% lie elsewhere. Capitalism is a busted flush. So there’s no point in continually wasting time & energy trying patch up that which is broken.
What is needed is a radical new approach as to how the general population can spend its time for the common good. Weaning us off growth-based materialism isn’t going to be a walk in the park, that’s for sure, not least among those nations still playing catch-up. However there are enough ideas already being hatched out, such as UBI, which will eventually be introduced enabling progressive governments, employing 21st century economic policies, to invest in human creativity outside the serfdom of the capitalist matrix.
Hurrah! It’s the beginning of the end for the northern European, protestant, Anglo-Saxon work ethic. But probably the prevailing economic order will have to crash first, bringing much pain & suffering to those who can least bear it. However, if it means a better life for future generations then so be it. Birth is rarely a painless experience.
Optimism reigns on this day of the winter solstice!
I think you are right: we have to be weaned off work for fruitless purpose
The first way to do that is to control advertising
Its pretty simple economics that the easy availability of skills at a cheap rate (as in unlimited migrant labour – a version of Marx’s ‘reserve army’) disincentivises investment in training, both for investors and also for the individual investing in their own training. Computing degree numbers slumped when the way was opened for cheap, ready-trained IT labour.
But no one here seems to mention that.
Your point may not be mentioned because it may not show itself in the area of the economy the respondent works in?
The economy is a very complex animal. The tendency to over simplify it is seen by people like Steve Keen to be a neo-liberal trait. There is not just one demand and supply curve for an economy: rather there are many.
I’m a developer and in the built environment these days good Quantity Surveyors (QEs – those who price up the build cost of a house) are in very short supply and wages have gone up. Firms are recruiting abroad – not because of cheapness but because of lack of home grown supply of trained and experienced QEs.
Indeed across the whole of the building sector there are shortages – so traditional lumbers are being trained up as gas installers too for example.
A lot of this has to do with uncertainty created by a Tory government who talked down the economy and told us that we were broke, who then brought in and retained austerity and then introduced us to the joys of BREXIT. A comedy of errors except that it is not funny being at the sharp end when you want good staff to fulfill your development objectives to a sufficient level of quality and price.
There has been a lack of training since the 1980’s. The push for more students to go to university has removed the responsibility of training from employers to the state. The large influx of foreign labour has also removed the need for employers to train staff. In essence UK companies have become addicted to free training to improve their profitability. The continual trading of Public ltd companies and companies owned by private equity, has created a short term accountancy culture to ensure quarterly figures appease the markets and banks. Why invest in something for a return in ten years time when high level strategy requires companies to be traded as simple commodities.
But they couldn’t carry through with those strategies if they didn’t have the cheap labour supply, which exists because of the big difference in wage levels between eg this country and most others. And that is the situation.
The difficulty is the absence of evidence to support that claim
OK lets talk about the construction industry – not many would contest that the building industry workforce has completely changed in the last 18 years, that skilled building industry workers such as carpenters are now (and have been for a long time) very much in competition with cheaper migrant labour and lucky to be employed. So – no incentive there for home-grown skills devt, and without that – an overall loss of those skills to the domestic workforce.
(The Olympics was built by foreign labour and UK workers couldn’t get near it. That included – and they even had the cheek to document it – Romanian and Bulgarian workers when they weren’t supposed to be employed here. Cheap labour must have really ratcheted up the corporate profits, when the cost trebled anyway.)
So if there is a skilled labour shortage in the work area you highlight – are you doing any training??
No research? You just sit and wait for the research to get through the BBC corporate filter – til there is a complete loss of skills.. Do you ever talk to workers?
If only you could debate without being absurd Linda
Hi Linda
An open goal – thanks.
My firm has an apprentice scheme and we take on 8 per year in all areas of the business. We are very proud of this and retention is high but we also know that our apprentices go and get jobs elsewhere if we cannot offer them full time work after their tenure.
But the fact is that apprenticeships are not a panacea.
A number of our apprentices are apprentice surveyors BUT they are still learning – they still have college to attend, they still have yet to take their qualifying finals. They are not ready. And our current QS retires next year!! Our apprentices are long term commitments so to fill the gap we will have to take on a new QS in the short term and also offer full time permanent employment package to attract someone of the quality we need with wages dictated by shortages in the market.
Having recently carried an EU procurement exercise, our potential contractors have all faced problems like this. I would say only a quarter of the 23 firms we’ve interviewed to get onto our contractor framework have a apprenticeship schemes but some of these firms are very small (4 person operations). But many did offer work experience to those on full time educational courses (University or colleges) to deal with upsurges in demand.
As ever, the challenge is a difficult one – it is hard to line up all the ducks so to speak. In some areas – the North West – finding a surveyor is relatively easy but in Cornwall it can be a whole lot harder – not helped by the wage differences and house prices in that area that makes young people more likely to leave to find a livelihood. This is not just an effect of low wages because of immigration – it’s an effect of not enough affordable housing because of an out of control housing market and low numbers of social housing construction that would enable people to have a place to live and get started in a career maybe?
Thanks for all that insider information re training in your industry. Not an ‘own goal’ – Im glad to hear it. But the fact that it has got like this now is surely a marker that the issues have not been addressed over the last 20 years or so with any sort of responsibility, forethought or public interest priority.
Re out of control housing market. The issues are different in different parts of the country though obviously with overlap too.
I believe that for Cornwall, well-to-do people’s second homes is a big factor in creating a shortage of affordable housing for young people.
But in London – where there has been such unprecedented high immigration, THE PEOPLE COMING IN ALL NEED TO LIVE SOMEWHERE. There is a connection between immigration and housing market – though so rarely acknowledged, especially by those who try to claim the handle of ‘Left’.
Ive decided that I will not sympathise with young people having to live with parents and delay (forever?) having their own families, until they grasp the nettle and act politically. So long as their top priority is looking ‘non-racist’ they are on a loser. They need to wake up to the fact that their lives are being curtailed by big business manipulation – big business that wants to grow the economy in the crudest way – more people/cheap labour.
They have to organise and do it themselves, no one is going to do it for them, not people who have somewhere to live and comfortably see house prices increasing.
As for Richard’s comment – same old, same old – an attempt to silence someone saying something you don’t like. I bet a lot of people do want to read what I have to say, whether you like it or not. And sexism? I wont even go there.
Linda
If I was the only person who found your caustic approach impossible to deal with I would worry
I am well aware I am not
This has nothing whatsoever to do with your arguments or gender
It is just that you are exceptionally rude and seem to delight in it
Have a good Christmas,mall the same
Richard