Clearly, I do not have a head for numbers

[andrewducker]

Can someone explain this
to me?

Apparently the number of unemployed people is down - hurrah! - but the
number of people claiming jobseekers allowance is up - boo!

If the number of unemployed people is not equal to the number of people
claiming the money that unemployed people get, then what _is_ it equal to?

Comments

[miss_s_b]

Lots of unemployed people are disqualified from claiming jobseeker's, and you can claim jobseeker's if you are working, as long as you are working less than 16 hours.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

Not sure about the UK but in America the official number of unemployed people is always different from the number of people seeking unemployment benefits.

The total number of unemployed includes people who have run out of unemployment benefits, who are not looking for work because they are taking care of children or in school, etc...

The number of people seeking unemployment benefits is simply the number of people who have recently lost their jobs and/or are still eligible for benefits.

[andrewducker]

In the UK Jobseeker's allowance doesn't run out.

But some people might have stopped looking for work, and be living off their partner. It's complex, I guess.

[despotliz.livejournal.com]

There's two types of JSA, aren't there? You could be at the end of the conribution-based allowance and have too much in savings to move on to income-based JSA, so you'd stop getting it.

[andrewducker]

D'oh - I thought that the contributions-based allowance had a different name, but it turns out that it doesn't.

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

You still claim it to get the free council tax and other related stuff like national insurance stamps - it's just that they don't credit your account with any money in return for you signing on.

[fearmeforiampink]

The people stopping looking for work is people becoming 'economically inactive' which is a number that is mentioned to have increased. Also, I note the story talks about the number of people on benefits going up; not specifically Jobseekers Allowance, but benefits in general.

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

or they might stop your benefit because they have a target to meet ...

[naath.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure of the exact definition of "unemployed" but it probably includes people who have too much in savings or whose spouse/partner has too much income or savings to qualify for JSA. It might include people who are claiming disability related benefits (in particular moving these people from ESA to JSA because the government felt like claiming they aren't disabled, even though they are, increases JSA claims without increasing the number of people not working).

[drplokta]

The government's preferred source for unemployment figures is the Labour Force Survey, which includes everyone who wants a job but isn't on benefit for whatever reason.

[andrewducker]

Interesting - thanks!

[drplokta]

In particular, it's possible that the government is starting to make progress with its objective of moving people who are deemed to be fit for work off invalidity benefits and onto Jobseeker's Allowance, thus pushing up the number of claimants.

[randomchris.livejournal.com]

That can't be right - it's a quarterly survey and the results are updated monthly.

I'd guess that they can work out number of people in work from NI payments or similar, and then deduct that from working-age population to get number of people not in work?

[randomchris.livejournal.com]

Sorry, my bad - apparently it's now done continuously and they take the figures from the last three months.
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/theme_labour/unemployment.pdf has full details.

It's ridiculously inaccurate though:
"For example, for April to June 2010, we can be 95% confident that the true level of unemployment was within 78,000 of the estimate of 2,457,000 (ie, within the range
2,379,000 to 2,535,000)" That's about a 3% margin.

So the recent fall of 10,000 to 207,000 could be pretty much all margin of error (going one way last time and the other way this time). I wish they'd state that alongside it!

[steer.livejournal.com]

Because of various crackdowns, savings limits and so on, the number of people who can claim jobseeker's allowance is much much lower than the number of unemployed. Last time I was out of work (for a month) I couldn't claim jobseeker's.

For example:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13773692
2.43 million unemployed
1.49 claiming jobseekers

Incidentally, the number of unemployed is not the same as the number of people who are in working age without a job -- that also is factored. A person has to be actively seeking employment to count. So in mid 2010 for example, 21.7% of adults were neither employed nor unemployed.
http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm#unemployed
You may remember in the late 90s there was a fuss as Labour revised the method of counting unemployment since the figures from the conservative years were a drastic under estimate.

One situation where the two would go in a different direction would be a recovery from a long down turn. Crude model:
1) At start of recession many people lose jobs but have too many savings to get jobseeker's.
2) As recession progresses they begin to filter on to claiming.
3) As recession ends a number of new jobs are created, the number of unemployed falls. However the number of people claiming jobseeker's still rises as the number filtering on from 2 outweighs the number of enw jobs.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, the reason that "unemployed" is preferable as a measure to "not employed" is that a large number of "not employed" could be a very healthy economy.

If lots of people were making so much money that their partner became a housewife/househusband then that would increase the number of "not employed" but not the number of "unemployed".

[randomchris.livejournal.com]

The "counting unemployed" link you've got there is for the US government, not the UK government.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Oops -- sorry, very careless. Thanks. The method is sufficiently similar that I didn't notice the difference on a quick read through.

[nickys.livejournal.com]

It's equal to:

the number of people claiming the money that unemployed people get
+
the number of people who can't claim benefits because they have a working partner
+
the number of people who are on other types of benefit such as disability benefit but are nonetheless looking for work
+
the number of people who have had their JSA suspended for missing out a comma in an application form or some other similar dreadful crime against the state

... and so on.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

Several people you know have, in years past, stopped claiming JSA for periods because after a certain amount of time on JSA you had to (at this point in time) go on courses (which they didn't want to do), so they'd just stop signing on and getting benefits until things "reset" then they'd start it again.

[andrewducker]

I wonder how long you have to stop in order for that to happen. I never saved enough to be able to afford that (and actually found the course I was sent on interesting).

[mair_in_grenderich]

I'm unemployed and not claiming JSA. As I'm not jobseeking.

[undeadbydawn.livejournal.com]

another factor will be people going into full time education.
my benefits ended the moment my HND started, which I wasn't expecting.

amusingly, if I hadn't bothered going to college and declared self-employment, I'd still be receiving full JSA, housing and council tax benefit and a grant for starting my business. I would probably now be debt free and doing absolutely nothing useful at all.