Guest Post - Unemployment figures and clients of the state

Today’s headline unemployment figures show that on the face of things at least, the country is getting back on track, however when you look at the details a different picture emerges.

The headline figures show that the employment rate has risen by 0.3% so there are now 28.86 million people in employment, whilst unemployment fell by 0.1% to 2.5 million people, 1.59 million of which are claiming jobseekers allowance.

What is more interesting though is the detail, the bit that is never reported and specifically the bit that tells us about this government’s approach to resolving unemployment and creating jobs. That is the split between employment in the public and private sector.

If you delve into the figures you can see that the number of people employed in the public sector in the last year was up by 7,000 workers to 6.1 million, whilst the number of people employed in the private sector fell by 61,000 to 22.76 million. This means that a little more than one fifth (21%) of all employed people in this country are employees of the state, bringing in no tax revenues for the government and supported in their entirety by the tax revenues of private sector jobs.

And oh how they are supported. The ONS figures show that the average private sector employee earns £22,152 per year whilst the average public sector employee earns £23,972 a difference of £1,820 a year, a figure that excludes their gold plated pension scheme and other benefits.

What about pay rises then? Well, whilst the private sector has spent the recession battening down the hatches and freezing pay over the last year the same cannot be said about the public sector where average pay is actually up by an inflation beating 3.8%

Stop and think for a minute. Those workers represent a public sector salary bill alone of £146.3 billion pounds, if only 10% of those jobs were in the private sector instead that would be at least an extra £4.7 billion pounds of income tax and National Insurance every year and would save the exchequer at least £14.6 billion a year in salary costs. That’s £19.3 billion gone from our record 101.3 billion pound deficit in a stroke, but instead of trying to create private sector jobs over the past decade, Labour and Gordon Brown, have instead focused on creating jobs in the public sector.

Since 1997 the number of public sector jobs has actually risen by 11% a record figure. Why? Because Labour, and specifically Gordon Brown, wants to make everyone a client of the state. Whilst at University, Gordon Brown wrote an article that pointed out that if the Labour party could make a majority of the population clients of the state, that is either dependent on the state for employment, or dependent on it for benefits, then they could remain perpetually in power.

For the last 12 years, both whilst he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, and now as Prime Minister, he has been doing everything in his power to deliver on that vision for Britain, but it won’t work. Why? because the Conservative Party don’t want to see our great country reduced to that, so we will fight against it, becuase private business refuses to see the world that way, acting to subvert it, creating jobs and growing not because of, but despite, red tape and bureaucracy, and most importantly voters can see it for the scam it is and will vote against it come election day.

Nadhim Zahawi is the Conservative Prospective Parliamentary candidate for Stratford-on-Avon for more details see his website at www.zahawi.com

Related Content