Those employment figures

With no more responses from Jonty Olliff-Cooper, we can turn our attention to the latest employment figures, perhaps with a sense of deja vu.  The number of people unemployed fell a bit again.  This time there's been no careful analysis on Newsnight or the news; no critical report by Stephanie Flanders.  Presumably they didn't want another hysterical rant from Iain Duncan Smith.  The item on the BBC news website does report the ONS's verdict that "it's all down to women".  The number of men out of work has actually gone up.  And it does show the wide variations in unemployment around the country, and that it's actually going up in many areas.  Significantly for the Work Programme, it also reports that a record 1.42 million people are working part-time because they can't get full-time jobs.

Channel 4's Factcheck blog takes apart David Cameron's claim that the number of women in employment is up.  And Fullfact demolishes his boast that half a million private sector jobs have been created since the election.  It's also been shown that a lot of the "jobs" are accounted for by people going self-employed, often unwillingly.  And, of course, we don't know who they are, these people who are getting work.  They are probably not the long-term unemployed who would provide bumper payments to the WP providers.  If they are taking part-time jobs, they won't provide any outcome payments to the providers.  And since in many parts of the country, unemployment continues to rise, the outlook for the providers there is even bleaker.

I wonder whether there are negotiations going on to change the contracts.  Will all that part-time, casual or zero hours working be redefined as success?  I wouldn't be at all surprised.

Iain Duncan Smith shows his true colours

When the latest unemployment figures came out last week there was some debate over what they meant.  They showed that overall the number of unemployed had gone down a bit.  That's obviously the bit that the government wanted to focus on.  But the improvement was mostly in the London area.  In many parts of the country, away from the capital, the numbers of unemployed had gone up.  And, it was pointed out, a big chunk of the improvement was down to lots of people being self-employed, with no indication of how much work they had, and to people having to take part-time work because they couldn't get full-time.
       The BBC has a few interviewers / presenters who are expert in their own fields.  One of them is Stephanie Flanders, an economist.  She reported the facts and set up an interview with a nurse who is technically self-employed but only gets work for a few hours a week.  And that infuriated Iain Duncan Smith, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.  He has lodged an official complaint with the BBC.  The Telegraph reports that, "In an interview he accused Miss Flanders of 'pouring cold water' over figures showing a rise in the number of people in work and 'peeing all over' the efforts of British businesses."  He went on to accuse the BBC of following Labour's reading of the economy.  The Independent also has the story and quotes the BBC's response.
       The objectionable language used by IDS is bad enough.  But the fact that he complains about biassed reporting shows that he is not fit to hold office.  He has been given ample opportunity to put the government's point of view.  The media have a responsibility to look beyond the spin.

Yet more publicity

As if the interview in the Guardian wasn't enough for one day, Emma Harrison appeared on the BBC news this evening. Stephanie Flanders did a report on the financial mess in the country, and pointed to A4e as one company which had "thrived under Labour" and had now "gone global". There was a brief appearance from Harrison, naturally chirpy, saying that they are bringing all the tax revenues back to the UK, and that has to be a good thing.

One would love to see Flanders, a genuine economics and business expert, do a proper interview with Ms Harrison. She could ask about the failure of the 2006-2009 contracts to deliver the goods; and she could probe the cost to the taxpayer of each job outcome under FND, and whether it could be done better and more cheaply. But that kind of scrutiny isn't on the agenda of the media at the moment.