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.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
There are links to this blog's glossary in the above post that explain technical terms used in it. Follow them for more explanations.
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Buy me a coffee!
Does the Telegraph employ anyone for their ability in critical thinking? Dream on.
🙂
I took out a digital subscription to the Telegraph during the first covid lockdown to see what the other side were thinking. My initial suspicions were confirmed; they didn’t then and they still don’t.
under the same circumstance I learned that the same applies to many who comment under articles in the FT.
No wonder things are they way they are, if those who are supposed to lead think(?) in such a fashion.
I have subs to both
I need to know what they are saying.
Their unwritten expectation, is probably some rehash of the Victorian workhouses. But no doubt with a sanitized branding, e.g. “Family redeployment centres”.
And how do these businesses expect to get customers with money to spend, if those customers are their current workers they have just made unemployed for a robot…
Let’s say Musk succeeds with his dreams of Optimus (his humanoid robot), and it can physically do everything a human can, but for more hours a day with no fatigue and a license cost less than a salary. With no one working, who will have the money to buy things the robots make? Is this how neocapitalism will eat itsef?
Henry Ford understood that unless he paid his factory workers a decent enough salary to be able to afford the cars they were making, he would not have a business. It is not rocket science is it Mr Musk!
This article has an interesting observation in that the real economy is tanking due to many more things than just AI but AI is being used as an excuse because it makes management look like innovators to their investors:
https://pivot-to-ai.com/2026/01/29/the-job-losses-are-real-but-the-ai-excuse-is-fake/
Accepted. It’s not just AI. We might be screwed by neoliberal logic anyway. But AI is not helping, and just continues the trend.
There is an obvious huge investment opportunity for any firm offering expensive consultancy services to organisations suffering AI-induced skills shortages.
For a freebie introductory offer you get an AI Based virtual consultant. After 30 seconds this expires. The AI Consultant will offer one recommendation – a human consultant who, for a humungous fee, will “write” an expensive report. An actual face to face visit with a long powerpoint presentation, and a Ted-type motivational talk will be available for an extra fee by MSTeams Link (subject to connectivity constraints).
Consultants will be certified by the newly established Royal Academy of Chartered Rip-Off Merchants (RACROM).
This is GROWTH!! 😉
🙂
There actually is a solution to this problem: When they start getting rid of employees and replacing them with robots, start striking for a shorter workweek at the same pay, and make them hire everybody back at fewer hours for the same pay, starting with those corporations with the most money.
If the corporations try to raise their prices to maintain their rate of profit, strike again, this time for more money. Make them give you the money. They’ve been keeping productivity gains for themselves—now it’s your turn. If people need training, make them hire somebody to teach them.
You have a whole toolbox full of tools: strikes, boycotts, protests, public opinion, and probably others. Don’t let them lead you around by the nose anymore.
Talk to Richard Wolff of Democracy at Work. He’s been working on how to start and run worker-owned outfits for years.
Some things may work best if the customers own them, some the workers, some an appropriate level of government. There are choices. Talk to people. Organize yourselves now. Don’t wait until half of the population is unemployed.
Do you think this will work?
When the power is not with employees as unemployment rises how can it without government backing?
It’s very strange. Labour simultaneously says it wants to get people off disability/health-related social security and into work, but it seems to have little ability to get the 1.6M people currently on job-seekers’ allowance into work in an economy where there are at any time only about 0.8M vacancies. So what are people rejoining the work-economy from PIP/Health-related UC going to do?
In addition to that, there are estimates – which do vary – that AI could dispense with at least 1.5M jobs in the UK. 1.5M is the lowest number out there, but some estimates have an extraordinary 5-6M jobs disappearing. Without wishing to pigeonhole people with disabilities, one might imagine the jobs to go are going to be the routine, white-collar rols which demand the least physical effort in the economy. Yet the government is rushing headlong into backing AI without plans for its regulation, or mitigation of its effects on the economy which – presumably – it takes to be beneficial. It makes little sense.
In addition to that, there seems little appreciation that the government’s longed-for economic growth appears very difficult to find. Perhaps we – in the West – really are in what some economists are calling a “post-growth world”. But where is the philosophical discussion as to what the very concept of work might come to mean in such a world? One looks in vain for it from the current government, who prefer instead rather vacuous slogans such as Get Britain Working, as if work was simply a puzzle waiting to be solved or a workforce was something to be unleashed. Most DWP benefits are claimed by those already in work. Timms’ intentions seem at least to be less brutish than last-year’s attempted PIP reform (read:cuts), which is something at least, but there’s very little depth there. We shall see what happens.
Wayback when, Thatcher used “going on the sick” to reduce gov-induced mineworker/steelworker unemployment stats.
Then new Labour began to attack those “languishing on sickness benefit”. Now Labour speak of the “medicalisation of anxiety” esp in the younger demographic.
But none of them seem to have any plans to solve the lack of available jobs, caused by their own economic industrial and trade policies.
So they blame those without jobs. Again. Whether that is through ill-health or lack of enough available work.
Hopefully, society is beginning to question these feeble 45yr old explanations?
Yet solutions are available, beyond the neoliberal dogma.
Agreed
So much of work has become hostile to its employees, Torygraph reflects this.
Recent example people working flat out in rush times in a well known artisan bakery, then put on part time schedules when not,
As an employee you can’t live like this, all costs remain constant, not keeping up results in homelessness.
Every day in the media we hear the same ‘mantras’, on panels like ‘questions time’ there are always several panelists, criticising some failure to cut the welfare bill. But here is the thing, the impact of welfare cuts, just by the recent welfare bill reducing the Health Element (in UC) by about half (£423 to £217 / month), will have a knock on effects beyond this cut, putting some people at risk of losing their homes. Example: sole trader diagnosed with cancer. Never claimed benefits. The impact of his treatment in the best scenario means that he will be out of work at least a year. His wife has net earnings £1322 / month. Mortgage £1100 / month -no savings – do not have a mortgage protection, probably the Telegraph would criticise this. At this level of income they do not have an entitlement to UC at all. In the past, after 3 calendar month assessment phase, they would have accessed some Universal Credit which in turn after another 3 months would have enabled them to claim Support with Mortgage Interests (SMI). This could save their home. True there would be a charge on the property for this (SMI government) ‘Loan’ but… Now as the Health Element has halved, they will NOT qualify for UC during or after the Assessment Phase, their income is too high. He will get £92.05 / week during the first 13 weeks of being unfit for work (contributory Benefit). They will NOT access support with their mortgage as UC is the ‘qualifying benefit’ to be able to do so. Negotiating with the mortgage lender a repayment holiday will be extremely difficult and very short-term. The name of the lender didn’t bide well (my experience). Their home is at risk. Do we really need more homeless people? In temporary accommodation on years-long waiting list for social housing? Or being forced into privately rented accommodation at which point, UC will be in payment because of support with housing costs. This will then apply. Still no rents around their area below.. £1400 / month for essential. They have no entitlement to Council Tax Reduction either (In this case £169 / month). I despair. I feel angry some days, I fear the message is never getting through. This is a taxi driver (he has a leased car as well!)..Future looming: AI and driverless cars?
You are clearly relating a real case.
This is the uncaring state at work.