Aside from fallacious claims about reducing the national
debt, the Conservatives' second claim to economic success--the creation of
millions of private sector jobs--is also requires exploration. The well-rehearsed
argument goes that massive cuts to public spending are not problematic since the private
sector will take up the slack and create jobs to replace those lost in the public sector. There are several sleights of
hand say that require unpicking in this part of the austerity narrative.
First it is important to note that the statistics tell us
something about the quantity of jobs but nothing about the quality of those
jobs, an argument made cogently by the TUC. A job as a nurse or an administrator in a public-sector setting is likely
to be a unionised job with a nationally negotiated rate of pay and decent terms and conditions.
The sort of job being generated in the private sector is much more likely to be
an unskilled, poor-quality job with low pay. These jobs will do nothing to
help with the standard-of-living crisis and will also not contribute to
rebuilding a flourishing economy even in conventional terms.
The political narrative behind these arguments about the substitution of private for public jobs is the
inability of the public sector to create wealth: an important part of the
Conservative attack on the public sector (and devastatingly critiqued in an earlier blog!). So it is important to realise that
many of the 'new' private sector jobs are actually simply redefined
public-sector jobs. My job is a good example. Two years ago I worked in the
public sector but now I work in the private sector. Because universities were
privatised and are no longer funded from taxation, my job is now one that creates
value whereas previously I was a parasite on the taxpayer. The same also
applies to those who work in privatised sections of the health service or in
services that are increasingly being outsourced from public sector employers
such as schools and hospitals. (The Guardian has carried out some preliminary work unpicking this tissue of statistical manipulation.)
Finally, we need to ask what is a job? The data are most
often used by Tories in claiming credit for this economic miracle are
aggregated data based on everything that counts as a job. Incredibly even
people working on zero-hours contracts are included in these figures as are
those who are on any type of work scheme. So you don't actually have to be
working to be counted in the government's jobs figures. Any government
spokesman who presents data on increases in jobs without relating these two
full-time equivalent jobs is, if not a liar, at least being very economical
with the truth.
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