Work Foundation call for focus on low paid "Bottom 10 million!"
Fair Pay News |
on: Monday, 31 January 2011
Call to focus on low-paid workers
The Government has been urged to tackle the "declining" job opportunities for about 10 million workers already struggling on earnings of less than £15,000 a year.
The Work Foundation said focusing on the number of people finding a job was not enough for the coalition to meet its targets for benefit savings and poverty reduction.
Ministers were told there was an urgent need for quality, lasting jobs which would help regenerate areas of the country with large numbers of low-paid workers.
The report said the UK suffered from a "long tail" of low-skill, low-wage employment, with people "trapped" in a revolving door between low-paid, poor-quality work and unemployment. The so-called "bottom 10 million" were most vulnerable to pay cuts and job insecurity, said the Work Foundation, which added that in places such as Blackpool, Grimsby and Hull, a third of workers earned less than £7 an hour.
Naomi Clayton, the report's author, said: "There is an urgent need for quality, lasting jobs that provide opportunities for development and progression. The regional and local divisions in jobs cannot be addressed without tackling the bottom 10 million. Without more, better paid jobs, long-term sustainable regeneration in these places will not be possible. In such depressed local labour markets, lack of labour demand creates and reinforces social problems further reducing individuals' chances of securing sustainable, quality employment.
"Policy makers need to consider a wider range of measures, used in parallel with the national minimum wage and working tax credits, to combat in-work poverty. The UK has built up a strong network of labour market intermediaries helping people find better jobs and develop skills. Sustaining and strengthening these networks for the 'bottom 10 million' will be a key part of any future strategy and will have to be backed by sustained public investment."
The Work Foundation said initial signs of recovery in employment have been halted as a result of the accelerating pace of job losses in the public sector and lack of overall growth in private firms. The research group pointed out that unemployment increased by 48,000 in the West Midlands in the three months to last November.
A Department for Work and Pensions spokesman said: "The coalition Government is focused on restoring the economy and supporting private sector jobs growth. There are jobs available in the economy with Jobcentre Plus alone taking on over 70,000 new vacancies every week - that's around one million coming up through Jobcentre Plus every three months.
"The Work Programme, which is due to come on stream shortly, will provide much more targeted support for jobseekers so that they can get into employment and stay there and our broader welfare reforms will ensure that work always pays.
"Personal tax changes will remove nearly a million of the lowest earners out of tax altogether, and around 23 million basic rate taxpayers will gain by £170 per annum on average in 2011-12."
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