Friday, May 23

4.5 million UK households without full time earners

Ok, leave aside the political posturing over this statistic. But what does this tell you? This can mean that the pattern of work has shifted from full time work to part time work, or it can mean that more households are of single parenthood (who obviously cannot work full time given the shocking costs of child care in this country) or it can mean that there are no incentives given to the adults of working age to go out and work full time.

By definition, part time working will not give you as much earnings as earning full time will (generally!), so I can only guess that their survival is dependent upon the welfare state. But this is shocking because one in four households is effectively working much below potential at best or being a parasite at worst.

Given the fact that we are heading into a recession, taxes cannot be raised any more, where and how will the government try to get these dead weights into full time gainful employment? And its actually not getting better, its getting worse.

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