The Telegraph has reported this morning that:

Labour is struggling to get people off benefits and back into work after the number of welfare claimants securing employment fell to a seven-year low.

Just one in 14 people (6.9pc) on benefits moved from welfare into the workforce each month on average from January to September in 2025, according to official statistics. This is the lowest level since 2019.

It really is time the Reform-backing, Labour-bashing Telegraph understood a few basic things about the world out there. Let me list a few:

• Neoliberalism is all about reducing employment prospects.
• The whole goal of achieving higher productivity is based on succeeding at this.
• AI is primarily being developed to help businesses get rid of people.
• We know they are getting rid of people because of AI, and at higher rates in the UK than in other countries.
• Almost no funding is being provided to help unemployed people and those on benefits acquire new skills to navigate a post-AI world.
• As we all know, this is especially true for young people, trained by an education system that never saw this coming and which went out of its way to equip them with rote learning when critical thinking skills were required.

Then let me note:

• The government backs all these plans because it is deeply "pro-business", as the Telegraph would wish, but does not acknowledge.
• The failure to find work for people is the inevitable consequence of all this.

So then let me ask the obvious question:

• Where does the Telegraph think jobs are going to come from in an economy where all the goals, whether of profit maximisation, productivity gains, AI adoption, and market appeasement, make it clear that none are going to be forthcoming?
• What do they want to do for those left with the misfortune of unemployment as a result of those deliberate policies that they enforce?

I would be interested to know their answers.

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