A Sanction-where the money is stopped

The number of sanctions applied are staggering

The DWP sanctions have been Published
Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) was introduced in 2008 to replace incapacity benefit.

In the first three months of 2014, there were 15,955 sanctions on ESA claimants, compared with 3,574 in the same period last year.

Only ESA claimants in the work-related activity group, where an adviser assists them with training and skills, can be subject to sanctions, which are handed out for failing to attend a mandatory interview or failing to take part in a work-related activity.

There are 552,000 benefit claimants in the ESA work-related activity group and they receive up to £101.15 a week, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) said.

Matt Downie, director of policy and external affairs at Crisis, said: "This is a shocking escalation in the use of sanctions and we are deeply concerned about the impact on people's lives.

"Sanctions are cruel and can leave people utterly destitute - without money even for food and at severe risk of homelessness. It is difficult to see how they are meant to help people prepare for work.

"Our own research has shown that many homeless people face unfair and inappropriate sanctions, often handed out due to errors on the part of the job centre or work programme provider.

"We want the government to commit to an urgent, wide-ranging review looking at the appropriateness and effectiveness of sanctions, especially for people at risk of or experiencing homelessness."

I have looked at the Stats and here are some of the figures

The figures make for interesting reading

We feature the Birmingham figures here

			Decision to apply a sanction (adverse) 3		Other decisions taken:
					Decision not to apply a sanction (non-adverse) 4	Reserved decisions5	Cancelled referrals6
GREAT BRITAIN			1,282,497		714,408	134,775	681,192
CENTRAL ENGLAND			280,437		163,554	26,031	128,974
	Birmingham and Solihull		40,256		25,605	3,158	16,340
		Birmingham - Airport	-		-	-	-
		Birmingham - Aston	-		-	-	-
		Birmingham - Centennial House	1,934		1,374	139	741
		Birmingham - Chelmsley Wood	2,250		1,435	211	932
		Birmingham - Five Ways	-		-	-	-
		Birmingham - Harbone Lane	2,840		1,889	244	1,342
		Birmingham - High Street	-		-	-	-
		Birmingham - Holyhead Road	-		-	-	-
		Birmingham - Kings Heath	2,980		1,877	189	1,263
		Birmingham - Ladywood	3,015		1,673	170	1,019
		Birmingham - Meridian House	3,096		2,208	200	985
		Birmingham - Northfield	3,436		2,688	295	1,622
		Birmingham - Ravenhurst	-		-	-	-
		Birmingham - Small Heath	-		-	-	-
		Birmingham - Soho Road	4,219		1,982	258	1,544
		Birmingham - Sparkhill	4,862		3,737	473	2,046
		Birmingham - Sutton New Road	3,049		2,027	277	1,325
		Birmingham - Washwood Heath	3,729		1,946	339	1,876
		Birmingham - Yardley	1,471		1,074	91	535
		Solihull - Park House	2,369		1,124	192	764

prosperous areas

	Harrogate - Victoria Avenue	1,514		1,227	137	463
	Hessle - The Weir	826		435	76	275

I have highlighted Burminham Ladywood as it used to have the Highest

Other challenged area shows lower figures

Hull - Britannia House

8,470

4,110

499

3,261

Rotherham - Chantry House

6,991

3,574

728

3,848

Liverpool - Toxteth

1,448

1,428

131

1,344

Unemployment Stats with Explanations

Although we do not see the Benefit situation DWP have kindly poduced a link on Youtube
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lms/labour-market-statistics/august-2014/zero-hours-contracts.html
This is usefull as it also provides those looking at the argument of the Zero hour contract.
For many this is a new area as the zero hour means you can be technically in employment but not having hours of work


Here are the ONS

Analysis of zero-hours contracts

Looking at the type of people who report that they are employed on a zero-hours contract, compared with other people in employment who are not on a zero-hours contract, shows that there are differences in their characteristics. For April to June 2014:

• Women make up a greater proportion of those reporting working on zero-hours contracts (54%); compared with those employed who are not on zero-hours contracts (46%).
• People who report being on a zero-hours contract are more likely to be younger. 37% of people on zero-hours contracts are aged 16 to 24, compared with 12% for those employed who are not on zero-hours contracts.
• 64% of people on zero-hours contracts reported that they worked part time, compared with just over a quarter (27%) of those employed who are not on zero-hours contracts.
• People who report being on a zero-hours contract are more likely to be working in Accommodation & Food Services or Health & Social Work. Relatively few work in Financial, Insurance and Professional, Scientific & Technical Activities and Production (including Agriculture).
• The average actual weekly hours worked by people in employment who report being on a zero-hours contract is 22 hours compared with 32 hours for all workers. The average usual

Analysis of zero-hours contracts
Looking at the type of people who report that they are employed on a zero-hours contract, compared with other people in employment who are not on a zero-hours contract, shows that there are differences in their characteristics. For April to June 2014:

Women make up a greater proportion of those reporting working on zero-hours contracts (54%); compared with those employed who are not on zero-hours contracts (46%).

People who report being on a zero-hours contract are more likely to be younger. 37% of people on zero-hours contracts are aged 16 to 24, compared with 12% for those employed who are not on zero-hours contracts.

64% of people on zero-hours contracts reported that they worked part time, compared with just over a quarter (27%) of those employed who are not on zero-hours contracts.

People who report being on a zero-hours contract are more likely to be working in Accommodation & Food Services or Health & Social Work. Relatively few work in Financial, Insurance and Professional, Scientific & Technical Activities and Production (including Agriculture).

The average actual weekly hours worked by people in employment who report being on a zero-hours contract is 22 hours compared with 32 hours for all workers. The average usual weekly hours is higher at 24 hours (37 hours for all workers).
Alomg with the Claiment count theClaiment count by age and duration is also published by age and duration
Interesting as well the Vacancies are published by Sectors or industries making for interestingn reading

All vacancies1

Mining & quarrying

Manu- facturing

Electricity, gas, steam & air conditioning supply2

Water supply, sewerage, waste & remediation activities2

Construc-tion

Wholesale & retail trade; repair of motor vehicles and motor cycles

Transport & storage

Accomoda-tion & food service activities

Information & communica-tion

Financial & insurance activities

Real estate activities2

Professional scientific & technical activities

Administra-tive & support service activities

Public admin & defence; compulsory social security

Education

Human health & social work activities2

Arts, entertainment & recreation2

Other service activities

Total services

Motor Trades

Wholesale

Retail

Should you wish to find out the size of the Business thats interesting as well
What about the Regions you ask?

• The employment rate in Great Britain was highest in the South East (76.7%) and lowest in Wales (69.1%).
• The unemployment rate in Great Britain was highest in the North East (9.4%) and lowest in the South East (4.4%).
• The inactivity rate in Great Britain was highest in Wales (25.7%) and lowest in the East of England (19.3%).
• The Claimant Count rate in Great Britain was highest in the North East (5.0%) and lowest in the South East (1.7%

Well this information is also available today. Showing the need for improvement and support in the North East because of the 9.4 % unemployment but as expected the South East is the Boom area
An indication where the investment is needed -The North East


Here are the terms that ONS use that fits the video above in case you didnt understand the activity or inactive aspects of the stats
The Stats are normally produced with a focus on the JSA as you can see from th other information on this sheet
However many job seekers are on ESA Employment Support Allowance and this has to be factored into the overall equation along with the Universal Credit aspect.



Graphic by Office for National Statistics (ONS)

Youth Unemployment

The skills Gap is something I have written about before so reading the article again by BBC and a report thats out means in my opinion and yes its only my opinion so much training is a waste

The think tank the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) says a full-blown economic recovery will not fix the UK's youth unemployment problem.

The IPPR highlights a striking mismatch between what young people are training for and the types of jobs available.

For example, it says, 94,000 people were trained in beauty and hair for just 18,000 jobs, while only 123,000 were trained in the construction and engineering sectors for an advertised 275,000 jobs.

Further more

Although the youth unemployment rate has fallen sharply from 20.9% a year ago to 17.8%, the IPPR says there are still 868,000 young people aged 16 to 24 unemployed and 247,000 of them have been looking for work for over a year.

Thats just under 250.000 1/4 of a million. in the NEET group. The highest group also to be taking up Universal Credit incidently.

"A strong workplace-based vocational education and training system, with high employer involvement, contributes more to a smoother transition from education to work and a low rate of youth unemployment than anything else

This means that there is a need to look at promoting more use of the UK Apprentice system where the work is focussed around a need.

Self Employment grows in UK -but what is the truth behind

UK becoming the fastest growing "self -employment " capital may hold a slightly different story to the new full time businesses springing up everywhere. The traditional concept of self -employment
Further more these self employed people may be doing this as a requirement to survive rather than long term choice

Self-employment over the past decade

• 36% rise among over-50s
• 7% rise among 35 to 49-year-olds
• 18% rise among 25 to 34-year-olds
• 23% rise among 18 to 24-year-olds

Source: Labour Force Survey, ONS

The latest labor statistics from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that there are now 4.54 million self-employed people. That is about 8% higher than a year ago.

In fact, there are now 780,000 more people in employment than there were this time last year, and 40% of those are self-employed.

"The number of people choosing to be their own boss is up 8pc over the past year, faster than in any other Western European country

The UK is becoming the "self-employment capital" of Western Europe after an increase in the number of people working for themselves, according to a new report.

The IPPR think tank said the country had caught up with the European Union average of 14pc of workers who are self-employed.

The number has increased by 8pc over the past year, faster than in any other Western European country, said the report."

Last month Esther McVey, the employment minister, said that the middle-class children should believe that setting up their own business is every bit as good as going to university and working for a big company.

She said self-employment should be given the same social status and respect as the more conventional university route into employment.

Spencer Thompson, IPPR senior economic analyst, said: "Around 2,000 people a month are moving off benefits into their own business. The Government's response to the rise in self-employment has been to praise the UK's entrepreneurial zeal, while increasingly promoting self-employment as an option to job-seekers.

"Some have seen it as a negative development, having legitimate concerns whether a lot of the new self-employed are actually employees by another name.

"The self-employed come in many shapes and sizes. Some are entrepreneurs, driven by high-growth ambitions, innovation and disruptive business models, but many are sole-traders bands simply looking to get by or small businesses happy to stay at their current level.

"Many older self-employed workers are simply working longer, due to a combination of rises in the pension age and recession-induced falls in the value of wealth stored up for retirement."

Country Proportion of self-employment Greece 32pc Italy 23pc Spain 17pc Portugal 17pc UK 14pc Belgium 13pc Switzerland 13pc France 11pc Germany 10pc

The report was published ahead of the latest unemployment figures tomorrow.

Previous figures, published last month, showed the number of self-employed workers had grown from 3.8m at the start of the crisis to more than 4.4m (see below).

Official figures have also shown much of the growth in self-employment has been driven by older Britons.

Meet the older Britons reinventing their careers with self-employment

The Telegraph has previously spoken to a number of pioneers who have shunned retirement in favour of a new career. Some did it out of necessity, while others felt it was time for a new challenge. All expect to work beyond their state pension age, something that will only become more common in years to come.

David Buck, 59, was a fitness instructor who turned his hobby of microlighting (small planes) into a business

"I was a fitness instructor for 13 years," said David Buck, 59. He had to stop work suddenly in 2009, due to health problems. "I was doing 16 classes a week and one day everything locked," he said. "I went from running six miles a day to being unable to climb stairs." ... Read the full report: Retire at 55? I started a thriving business

There is a the factor that needs consideration-

• The numbers of people that may be working part time economy 
• How many are in the Black economy(non declared income)
• The capital required to go self employed
• The types of business
• The level of support being provided
• Isolvencies

Is this all new business or is it business that has been developed under the term self employment in a new format of  consultancy?
How many declare self employment for the benefit of avoiding the benefit cap

UnderEmployment

Arguably Underemployment in the U.K is as significant issue as Unemployment has ever been. Politically there has always been the issue of the Job Seekers on Job Seeker Allowance (Unemployment Benefit) But now we see the emergence of the part time worker, or 0 hour worker

many politicians argue that this suits these individuals. However, the growth of the Food bank in recent years indicates that this is not the case.

The growth of self employment rather than unemployment has seen development but the test will occur when the interest rates rise as to how many of those self employed one man bands survive. Often the case is that these self employed people will work part time as well as being self employed.

The 0 hour contract is possibly the worst contract as it does not provide sufficient stability of hours and income to meet our Banking industry criteria. 

The emphasis of some of the sites I am connected to will be adjusting their direction to reflect on this change in emphasis

Underemployment refers to an employment situation that is insufficient in some important way for the worker, relative to a standard.^[1] Examples include holding a part-time job despite desiring full-time work, and overqualification, where the employee has education, experience, or skills beyond the requirements of the job.

Underemployment has been studied in recent decades from a variety of perspectives, including economics, management, psychology, and sociology. In economics, for example, the term underemployment has three different distinct meanings and applications. All meanings involve a situation in which a person is working, unlike unemployment, where a person who is searching for work and cannot find a job. All meanings involve under-utilization of labor which is missed by most official (governmental agency) definitions and measurements of unemployment.

Underemployment can refer to:

1. "Overqualification" or "overeducation", or the employment of workers with high education, skill levels, or experience in jobs that do not require such abilities.^[2] For example, a trained medical doctor who works as a taxi driver would experience this type of underemployment.
2. "Involuntary part-time" work, where workers who could (and would like to) be working for a full work-week can only find part-time work. By extension, the term is also used inregional planning to describe regions where economic activity rates are unusually low, due to a lack of job opportunities, training opportunities, or due to a lack of services such as childcare and public transportation.
3. "Overstaffing" or "hidden unemployment" (also called "labor hoarding"^[3]), the practice in which businesses or entire economies employ workers who are not fully occupied—for example, workers currently not being used to produce goods or services due to legal or social restrictions or because the work is highly seasonal.

Providers and Job centre business

Why is the government so keen to encourage private companies "to make a fortune out of the unemployed", paying the likes of Ingeus up to £14,000 for every person they help into "sustained employment" (including self-employment with small and precarious earnings)
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/10/private-companies-making-fortune-out-of-unemployed

With the current figures looking better than they have done is this a fair criticism?
Read the following  article that I can vouch applies throughout other areas of the U.K
"An old friend emailed me recently from the northern city that has been his home since birth, though we first met far away in Pakistan where work had taken both of us. He's a freelance – I won't say in what or name him – but when he started out his city still exported machinery across the world and his work was associated with that. He's 62 now, single, no family, and owns a small house. "Work seems to have dried up these last few months," he wrote in March, "so I may have to sign on again – and no doubt get threatened with being 'sanctioned' again, although now I hear that for new claimants my age they're recommending pension credits – looks interesting, anything to get the JSA numbers down. They're certainly not making it any easier for these youngsters that are claiming – the jobcentre staff say they have quotas for sanctioning but the government won't admit to it, they really are a bunch of bastards."

I knew that JSA meant job seekers' allowance, which is £71.70 a week for a single person, and I suspected that he feared "sanctioning" – having his benefits cut – because he wouldn't be interviewed for any old job. But pension credits? His next email took the time to explain. So far as he could see, "the holy grail" of government policy was to reduce the number of JSA claimants by whatever means so that the unemploymentfigures look better. ("Thatcher did this by allowing millions to claim disability allowance, and we are paying the price for that!")  Money could be saved by "bringing in the heavies" to take over from the "usually sympathetic local jobcentre people" and sanctioning the unemployed for not applying for enough jobs ("10, 20 or maybe 50 jobs a week") or for missing an appointment. Reducing numbers, on the other hand, required a different technique.

After a year of signing on as unemployed, a jobseeker is obliged to turn to one of the government's workfare programmes that are run by private companies where, in my friend's words, "they either try to find you work or, if you have nous, persuade you to go self-employed". Two years ago, he was sent to be interviewed by one of these companies, Ingeus, which operates under the slogan: "Our role is simple – to help people realise their potential." His interviewer strongly recommended self-employment in words my friend always remembered: "Look, you'll get £50 working tax credits, housing and council tax benefits, so you only have to earn £22 a week to be better off [than on JSA]. We'll give you a start-up grant of say £300 and we're off your back."

In fact, my friend was already self-employed – self-employed in theory and often unemployed in practice. His work picked up for a while, but is now again in the doldrums. If the government still wants to keep him out of the unemployment figures then the pension credit, a supplement to low incomes for people approaching pensionable age, is the obvious way to go. Before his work ran out, my friend earned £2,500 in the last financial year and received £50 a week in working tax credits and full relief on council tax. After some calculations, he thinks he'd be entitled to pension credits at the top rate of £145 a week while still preserving some or all of his council tax benefit.

To my friend, this looks a good deal. He won't need to sign on once a fortnight and the £7,250 a year in pension credits comes very close to the sum he needs to live on: he leads, as he says, a simple life. But the term "pension credit" confuses him, because, having neglected to pay enough national insurance contributions, his actual pension when he comes to claim it in three or four years' time will be lower than the money he could receive now, as a so-called credit. Nor is this his only confusion. Why is the government so keen to encourage private companies "to make a fortune out of the unemployed", paying the likes of Ingeus up to £14,000 for every person they help into "sustained employment" (including self-employment with small and precarious earnings), when jobcentres are offering £49 a week under the new enterprise allowance scheme to anyone willing to call themselves self-employed? If you want to cheat the figures, doesn't the state offer a cheaper way of doing it?

That may be so, but more states than the United Kingdom have offloaded their responsibilities under a smokescreen of talk that capitalism knows best. Ingeus, for example, was founded in 1989 in Australia as a small organisation called Work Directions dedicated to getting apparently "unemployable" people, often with physical disabilities, into employment. There was an inspiring story behind it. Its founder, Therese Rein, had seen her war-wounded father overcome severe handicap to work as an aeronautical engineer.

When the age of outsourcing began to dawn in the early 2000s, it rebranded itself as Ingeus and was soon opening branches in countries as disparate as Sweden and Saudi Arabia as a provider of welfare-to-work and business psychology services. When Rein's husband, Kevin Rudd, became prime minister, the group sold off its Australian business to avoid perceptions of conflict of interest, but three years later Duncan Smith's work programme opened a large new opportunity in the UK. Getting British people into work or "work" is estimated to generate about two-thirds of Ingeus's turnover.

Last month Ingeus was sold to an American company, Providence Service Corporation, in a complicated deal that was reported to be worth $225m (£135m). Every time you hear of the growth in the self-employed, which allows the government to claim that "more people are in work than ever before", think of a graph at the new company headquarters in Tucson, Arizona, and the strange way money is made."

Then look at todays article

It is hard to speak the truth about valued national institutions. But when they are not fit for purpose, we must speak out. Reports on Monday suggested the government is considering a radical overhaul of the Jobcentre Plus system that is so badly failing to help the unemployed find work. The news doesn’t come a day too soon. Our one-size-fit-all national system doesn’t reflect the varying and specific needs of individuals and needs serious reform.

The system in its current form is clunky, impersonal, and suited neither to today’s society. Time and time again I meet young people being let down by a framework that fails to help people find lasting employment.

For Britain to build a balanced and sustainable economy, and to avoid a genocide of wasted talent and potential, that needs to change.

Some people will feel an instinctive hesitation about scrapping an organisation that aims to support the unemployed and help them find work. The fact is that jobcentres are totally failing in their primary aim: only around one in three claimants find sustainable work within six months of claiming benefits. That is not good enough for an institution that receives many millions in state funding and serves, in theory at least, a crucial purpose. Back in November I gave a speech calling for exactly these reforms.

As the MP for an area like Tottenham you quickly learn that the factors leading to unemployment are as numerous as they are diverse. 18% of the working population, for example, has a mental health condition that creates a barrier to sustainable work. The unique nature of each case of unemployment means services must be personalised and responsive to individual needs. That could not be further from the reality of Jobcentre Plus. The fault is not with the advisers themselves but with a system that forces them to see too many people in too little time. When each overburdened adviser has an average caseload of 168 people, it is virtually impossible for individuals to be given any specialised support or treatments tailored to particular needs. It is hardly surprising, then, that two-thirds of unemployed young people feel that government services aren’t giving them enough support.

A report by the thinktank Policy Exchange outlines much of what needs to change. The current system should be abolished and replaced with a flexible alternative that can treat cases on an individual basis. The number of support providers should be increased so that specialist help is always available. And we should separate the system that distributes unemployment benefits from the organisations that help the unemployed into work. That will mean the young unemployed are treated not as benefit scroungers but as what they are: people with the potential to make a hugely valuable contribution to society. Unemployed people should be treated as potential to be realised, not a problem to be solved.

For this to happen, Jobcentre Plus’s role of helping people into employment should be handed to specialist organisations, creating a network of regulated charities and private sector organisations that already have expertise in this area. This would mean that individuals could be referred to an organisation best suited to their needs, with support packages tailored to each person. This system should be geared towards helping people on a case-by-case basis, working with individuals to work out the barriers preventing them from finding work and building a plan for overcoming those barriers. It is this kind of methodical and personal approach that will help people not simply to find work but, equally importantly, find the type of work that they are best suited to.

There is also a real need for services to be better integrated. Each organisation tasked with helping people into work should act as a central hub for combating the many different reasons that lead to people ending up unemployed– from health issues to confidence problems to a lack of training and skills. The limited powers of Jobcentre Plus staff mean that too often they try to force people into work without making efforts to tackle the underlying problems that make employment difficult. It is not surprising, then, that 40% of people that Jobcentres help into work end up back on benefits within six months.

Jobcentres have become a bastion of green and yellow-branded stigma; a silo where the unemployed are forced to trek each week for the briefest of appointments with an overworked and under-equipped adviser. It would make much more sense to move employment support organisations to the places where people spend their time: in shops, on high streets and in community buildings. We need to make it as easy as possible for those who need help and support to get it.

To tackle the scourge of young unemployment we need to be ambitious. That means radical reform of an institution that in its current form is not fit for purpose. The government should be brave in undertaking reform of the employment support system. It is the very least our young people deserve.

As stated before I have worked for A4e and other providers and can assure readers of the Blog that intiative is restricted to the requirments of DWP contract. Indeed, other approaches DWP may wish to roll out are restricted. Governments have always looked for the short cuts rather than the concept of meeting the need of the employer's business need. It takes some research to find out about quality available training as most forms of traning are restricted to Level1

I was approached by a Graduate asking my advice about the job Seeker agreement..Be aware i said that you need to be clear as to your own direction so you dont get trapped into a job rather than reaching you full potential

Email to employers for free with a personal touch

In todays day and age all Job seekers can learn new skills and ways of contacting employers.
Why for example shouldn't you send out your CV and cover letter to a large number of employers at the same time Using Mail merge and a free gmail account you can do exactly that and you can add all those key important lines to feature the key aspects that the employer should expect. You can even add those key words that their search systems use on recruitment. Get a few prospective letters proof read by someone who can sport those errors in grammar and spelling.Its an effective concept and if needed you can add some key touches.
Agreed you need to build an effective database and do some research but that is all part of the work required.
If all goes to plan then the employer may well be impressed.
Employers and companies do it all the time in the form of marketing you . The News Letters that personally appear in your inbox. Here is your chance!!!