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28 January 2010

“Jobs must be our number one focus“

Barack Obama's words ring true in the UK, too, as 2,250 fresh job losses are announced.

By Samira Shackle

Employment — or, more accurately, the lack of it — was at the forefront of the international news agenda today when Barack Obama focused on joblessness in his first State of the Union address. As he said:

People are out of work. They are hurting. They need our help. And I want a jobs bill on my desk without delay. Jobs must be our number one focus in 2010.

The words ring true on this side of the Atlantic, too. Perhaps less widely reported than the Obama speech were two bleak pieces of news for British workers.

Shop Direct, a home shopping group, said that it is to close three call centres in Sunderland, Burnley and Newtown in Powys, at a cost of 1,500 jobs. Toyota also announced that it will axe up to 750 jobs from its main UK factory, the Burnaston plant near Derby. These are large-scale losses in communities where jobs were already in scarce supply.

And the picture for those communities particularly hard hit by the recession looks set to darken further. A recent report by the Institute for Public Policy Research explains:

It appears that those areas where there has been the largest increase in unemployment have above-average reliance on employment in manufacturing, in particular in those low value-added manufacturing industries that are most vulnerable to competition from low-cost companies in emerging economies elsewhere in the world. Unemployment was already high in these areas because companies were closing and cutting costs as a result of this competition. The recession has accelerated the process.

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Other analysis shows that housing-led regeneration efforts in northern city-regions have been adversely affected by the recession and that some city-regions are likely to be badly hit when the government starts to cut public spending. For deprived communities in the northern city-regions, this could, therefore, represent a “triple whammy”.

Figures earlier this week showed that the economy has returned to growth (just), and last week that unemployment did not rise as much as predicted (largely because more people are working part-time).

Amid these tentative signs of recovery, today’s announcements were further evidence that the reverberations of the recession will continue to be felt for many months to come. Short-term help for these communities is vital, but even more important is long-term regeneration to fill the gaping hole left by the decline of UK manufacturing.

Both of the main political parties would do well to follow Obama’s lead and place jobs at the centre of the agenda.

 

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