Good article.

Job hunting is a job itself and one that, for a reason or another, I've been doing for more than a year now (even when I work I still look for something that is MORE my dream job especially since I'm trying to permanently move to another industry, within the same realm of the author's).

Another thing I hate , while looking for the desired job, is to have to take a job you don't like - but well, money doesn't grow on trees - and be treated with condescension or rudeness by your 'seniors' (sometimes they're even younger than you).

There are jobs around; it's just that there aren't jobs for EVERY person looking for one.

But compared to other countries like Italy or Spain, this is a much better situation.

@MirandaFox: I'm sorry you had all that trouble. It seems that the more honest you are in filling in your claims, the more you get punished.

I didn't have exactly the same situation but last year when I applied and said that I was on the summer break from a part time course (accredited by a University, but still taking place on weekends and the like especially for people working full time), I was said I wouldn't get any benefit at all because I didn't qualify. I spoke to 3 people within the Employment Office or whatever it is and every single person I spoke to had a different view on it (from 'Yes, you should be able to get them, you're on a break' to 'No, you're not entitled'). The website had discrepancies in information too. Well, to cut it short, I made two claims, both unsuccessful, and I didn't get any help with my rent (I was living by myself and renting a nice flat because my previous job covered for my expenses quite nicely), anything at all. I had to survive on my 'savings' and some loans from friends. I ended up taking the first job I was offered (I didn't like it at all and I was still looking for another job). Now I'm more in the same situation.

I fear making a claim as I will get the same answer again.

Before stating the obvious, that there are no jobs out there, in might be an idea to think of what a ‘job’ is. Industrial jobs (and all our jobs, without exception, depend on industry) in a modern context go back to 1769 when Trevithick invented the steam engine, and humanity hit the jackpot! We spent the next 250 years getting hold of cheap coal oil and gas, setting fire to it and deluding ourselves that it was employment. It wasn’t, it was fuel burning.
As long as we kept burning fuel, we could have more ‘jobs’. That’s what a job is, using one form of energy to transpose into another form, and that’s what ‘growth’ is, the increasing use of primary energy to support our infrastructure. So if we want a million jobs, we’re going to have to find the (increasing) primary energy sources to support them. Creating employment without primary energy means paying wages out of taxation (that’s called job creation) and eventual bankruptcy.
The rest of the world wants hundreds of millions of jobs too, which is why there’s already intense competition for those energy sources and why it’s rising in price. We’ve run out of cheap oil, now we’re having to fight over the expensive stuff. All that we call ‘civilisation’ was built on cheap fossil fuels, and we have locked ourselves into an oil burning economy that’s running out of oil. Forget renewables and alternatives, that’s just political spin to hide the reality of our situation. You can’t make a tractor tyre from a windfarm or run a 40 ton food truck on batteries. http://www.yourmedievalfuture.com/

well there are no jobs because immigrants get on buses and coaches and come to do them... no one can argue with that right? i mean i'm used to nonsense lies being put forward by 'economists' on the site, in the face of any evidence. I just wonder why in the last 10 years approximately 2 million people came to settle here.
Oh! yes i have heard it- the jobs were't good enough, or something like that. Yes, and the man who started at the bottom 10 years ago, where's he now?
The fact is people don't want to do the hard graft. That's the main reason. And guess wha, there are loads of people who are putting in the hours who are SICK of hearing how it's all so unfair blah blah blah. Of course ther's real pain, but mostly it's just lazies... the concept of what they have to do is so foreign they can't imagine it- witness the post earlier where soemone argues a job in Anglia isn't realistic cos his misses lives else where? it's not even considered a possibility, so how is the chain that leads to a better and more acceptable situation to be entered into? You think employers don't sense this. Why does it take pain for people to change their behaviour?

Mrs,M L Bonwick-Jones.
I am interested to know how you think there would be more jobs if the public sector were smaller? Surely if it bloated and full of 'make-work' jobs, handing it over to the private sector to be streamlined will eliminate those jobs leading to even more people looking for even less vacancies?

But you're right, it probably is the fault of the generation which has so little 'eduction' that it cannot even master basic spelling, and is so lazy it can scarcely be bothered to use the Shift key on its collective keyboards

Yea don't tell me ... its not government , it's independent!

Mrs,M L Bonwick-Jones:
I'm a foreigner (even though after almost 10 years here I feel more British than some natives) and while I agree that there are many people who are lazy and have no aspirations, I also believe that the 'foreigners' do the jobs that many English people (because of laziness or snobbishness or unability to speak foreign languages - sometimes even their OWN one) can't/won't do. It's all too easy to blame the foreigner, the 'alien' for the lack of jobs.

LilacCloud Britain is lucky to have you i'm sure as you know this country is very good at pointing the finger and can be insular, and you right English is not the first language for a lot of people in this country yet how many English people speak a foreign language which is a requirement for a lot of jobs these day's

acg: Why isn't it practical acg? Millions of people live apart from their partners sometimes for years. Why can't Steven work in East Anglia picking strawberries during the week and commute back on the weekends? Is it beneath him?

@Mr. Divine...
Underwent our second WCA c.Easter '11. As with our first such - one failed. As with our first such - one appealed.
As of now - awaiting appeal hearing c.six months after initiating appeal process. Expected result ? - failure !
'Stick it to 'em' says moi !
Deja Vu - all over again !

To post to this site I have been asked to multiply two numbers together. No problem but why was I asked "What is the answer to this sum?"?
A sum refers to addition or subtraction. I should have been asked to "Enter the product of these two numbers".

Thirty years since one left school this year.
First two years after - further education.
Twenty-eight years since - Benefits, minus two jobs lasting one month each !
All one seeks is an easy life - and for the most part one had such.
Long may it continue !

Steven Baxter: There are plenty of jobs in East Anglia I hear ... is that type of work beneath you? How much do you get paid for writing this blog? Isn't it 500 quid an article ... the same as John Pilger?

@Robert: I've heard they are not accepting anyone else on disability since January. Soon your case will come up and the appeal will fail ...wont it? Enjoy your holiday while it lasts Bobby.

"Steven Baxter: There are plenty of jobs in East Anglia I hear ... is that type of work beneath you? How much do you get paid for writing this blog? Isn't it 500 quid an article ... the same as John Pilger?"

You presumably missed the part in which Baxter mentioned his full time employed partner and joint morgage. Moving to look for work in another part of the country is clearly not practical.

As for the remark about blog payments, some benefits do allow you to earn a small amount, others, like the one I recieve, ask that you declare any such earnings and the amount will then be deducted from the benefit you recieve. Baxter will fall into one of these two catagories, but it's highly unlikely he is paid as much as a high profile writer like Pilger (although I doubt you actually assume he is).

"and you right English is not the first language for a lot of people in this country"

Looks like this applies to you too, Mrs Bonwick-Jones. Innit?

The main issue here is the jobs aren't coming back due to the effects of technological unemployment which are structurally built into the system we live in today - have a look at a great study by David Autor (MIT) http://www.good.is/post/automation-insurance-robots-are-replacing-middle...

We're at the end of the line when it comes to a 'work programme' - there's nothing that can come after a 'service sector economy' - even emerging markets like green technologies wont help fill the gap for the growing unemployed.

Ultimately we're going to collectively have to change our mind set to "work", "employment" and "growth".

In the short term though, there's no way the private sector can accommodate the growing unemployed.

I do apologize i am a Very Very old lady who refuses to wear her glasses
i also have great problems with new technology- but i have been justly admonished!
May i say that i have never been indoctrinated into political persuasion
it can make you very narrow minded and rude.

Unemploymment is the same if you don't have a job, and no money.
The question is who is going to create those jobs, the Govt or entrepreneurs, or yourself?

Great article.

@ alanm
The Times has become far too Left- Wing these days and The Telegraph is far too right-wing. i was just responding to a rather rude person or persons, i happen to like The Statesman in the same way as i like Spectator and Left Foot Forward, you must always keep an open even all you youngsters.

We Do, the goverment needs to help entrepeneurs to start up, and find a way to persuade uk employers to not look abroad for staff, we need to find new jobs, the population of this country is so large you will never again have enough jobs to go around especially if the millions who are on benefits are required to look for work instead of viewing unemployment as a life choice(Some do).May i say people have the right to come and live in this country and it is good and interesting to have a mixture life would be very boring if we were all the same but why did Tony Blair allow so many people in this quite small country that could never ever employ everyone was this done on purpose to increase the welfare state

Mrs,M L Bonwick-Jones - lay down your copy of The Express and instead look at the reality of the situation. According to the governments own statistics, there are something like 10 jobseekers to a vacancy, in some areas as many as 50 jobseekers to a vacancy.

That is "a vacancy". Not "a vacancy as project lead in NASA" or "a vacancy filling swimming pools with dosh then diving into it". Those vacancies in the statistics include the shelf-filling and the burger-flipping jobs that anyone can supposedly get.

The second myth that really needs to be put to rest is that unemployment has any connection with laziness. This idea is so absurd, so beyond all reason and logic, that it is a sad indictment on the intelligence of anyone who utters it.

If we are to believe this, then we must assume that after the first world war people became lazy, then quite a bit more lazy during the late 20s and early 30s. People started to get less lazy after the 50s, and very few were lazy during the 60s and early 70s. Then there was a laziness pandemic around the 80s, which gradually reduced during the 90s and early 2000s. Yesterday, laziness figures went up again, with people in the north in of the country and in poverty stricken areas being inexplicably more lazy than people in more afluent places.