The coke ovens at the abandoned steelworks in Redcar were blasted to pieces last week on the seashore.
The dismantling to make way for new green industries brought back memories of how my father Alan lost his job at a Teesside blast furnace in the 1980s after 40 years of service.
Even though no one was recruiting at the time, Dad would have given anything to be able to find employment once more.
As a result, he was forced into long-term unemployment like many others, which had a negative impact on his health and self-esteem.
Currently, Britain appears to be facing the opposite issue, at least on the surface.
Instead of there being too few jobs, which would leave hordes of people unemployed, there are a plethora of open positions.
Employers are struggling to find the personnel they require as a result.
Only 1.3 million people are unemployed, making the official unemployment rate of 3.8% the lowest in forty years.
Unfortunately, that optimistic picture is seriously misleading since it conceals a phantom army of millions of unemployed Britons.
Since Covid, the number of “economically inactive” people—those of working age who are not in a position to earn a living—has increased, and many of them have signed off on long-term sick leave.
Between the spring of 2019 and the same point this year, there were 2.5 million more persons who claimed they were too ill to work, a roughly 20% rise.
Nearly 2.3 million of them claim that their illnesses, whether they are mental or physical, are chronic, indicating that they are unable or unwilling to think about returning to work any time soon.
One in five working-age persons, or just under nine million people, are considered to be “economically inactive.”
Some of them won’t be claiming welfare; some will have valid excuses, like taking care of family members.
But more than five million people get various forms of unemployment compensation.
That is a significant drain on the public coffers and much bigger than the headline unemployment rate suggests.
High rates of unemployment plague several less affluent areas, like Middlesbrough, where I was raised, which is problematic for the government’s leveling up objective.
The situation is not ideal, though perhaps not as awful as in the 1980s when UB40 sung about the one-in-ten.
Middlesbrough’s official unemployment rate is 7.3%, which is over double the national average. 28 percent of the population is economically inactive, a substantially higher percentage. More than a fifth of them have a chronic illness.
The tale is similar in other places, like Blackpool.
It’s nothing new. Deprived communities have a high proportion of residents receiving long-term sickness benefits for many years.
However, the issue has been ignored, which has led to the false perception that our labor market is strong and that the unemployment rate is a relatively low percentage.
There is little possibility of a solution until politicians put aside their airbrushes and begin acknowledging the reality about neighborhoods where sick cards are dispersed like confetti.
We can no longer act as if our phantom army of unemployed employees doesn’t exist; at least some of them could be persuaded to return to work with help and encouragement. Labor shortages are now pervasive throughout the economy.
There are grave issues about how much Britain really isn’t working. Why are so many people avoiding work when there are plenty of good jobs available?
Are there really so many sick individuals, or is the UK dealing with a different form of illness altogether?
The most common justification offered for the rise in illness and inactivity is that more people are afflicted with so-called “Long Covid,” in which patients continue to experience virus-related symptoms.
However, experts who have compared the UK to other advanced economies contend that this does not explain why our labor market has recovered more slowly than those of other nations.
Paul Dales, chief UK economist at Capital Economics, speculates that Long Covid may be somewhat to blame for the rise in inactivity [in the UK]. But I’m not sure why the UK would be exposed to that more than other nations.
A good query. Could we be suffering from another British disease, idleness, which has no national bounds like Covid does? It doesn’t take a cynic of the highest order to detect a fake element amid the undoubtedly many genuine cases given the sheer magnitude of the numbers involved.
Sickness absence on this magnitude, whether genuine or fake, is a severe challenge for businesses, the economy as a whole, and not least for the individuals involved.
The increase of young, economically inactive White men between the ages of 16 and 24 is one particularly unsettling trend.
Inactivity among young people as a whole has significantly decreased over the past two decades, but this positive trend is being countered by a 2% increase in unemployment among young white males.
According to think tank the Resolution Foundation, the number of young men who claim they are unable to work owing to physical ailments and mental health issues like depression has doubled over the previous 15 years.
Thousands of young men claim they are afflicted with crippling illnesses at the very beginning of their professional life, despite the fact that the numbers are quite tiny.
However, people miss work for other reasons besides illness.
According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, more and more people in their 50s and 60s are opting for early retirement.
Many of them have built up additional money throughout the lockdowns and are fairly well-off.
Even still, it is surprising that so many middle-aged people, who may have another 40 years of life ahead of them, believe they have the right to retire early at a time when the nation is on the verge of an inflation crisis.
Even the previously stakhanovite CEO class, which believed that lunch was for wimps, has evolved into a sybaritic society.
Their poster boy is Andrew Formica, who last week declared his intention to resign at the age of 51 in order to “sit at the beach and do nothing.” Formica is the retiring head of renowned City fund manager Jupiter.
It’s not just him. An “anti-work” movement that claims to be a critique of exploitative and meaningless labor has emerged in the United States as a result of the pandemic.
Critics see it in a less admirable light, seeing it as a charter for malingerers and procrastinators.
The disregard for work has lately been identified as a long-term risk to productivity and growth by economists at Goldman Sachs.
I constantly hear from chief executives about their struggles to persuade employees to return to the workplace and about their recruitment efforts with candidates who insist on a lengthy weekend spent at home every Monday and Friday.
They even have a moniker of their own, the “TWATs,” which stands for “Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday Only” personnel.
‘Remoaners’ glibly blame Brexit and immigration restrictions for the current labour shortages.
Employers may easily fill any voids prior to the UK’s exit from the EU by importing workers from other member states of the union.
Some people, including the executives of the airlines EasyJet and Ryanair, are clamoring for the right to do so once more.
Regardless of one’s opinions on the EU, firms should first consider the vast pool of available labor right here in the UK rather than whining about a referendum that took place six years ago.
This is not a simple solution. No one is advocating for the eviction of bedridden patients into buildings such as offices, stores, and factories.
However, not everyone is in that situation. GPs might be better able to differentiate between the truly ill and the lazy lead-swingers if they actually saw more patients in person.
If businesses provided training, appropriate working conditions, and flexible hours, other people might be able to work to some extent despite their disease.
The manpower shortage that plagues every sector of the economy could be greatly alleviated if even a small portion of those people could be persuaded to return to the workforce.
Lack of laborers frustrates customers in a variety of industries, from restaurants to airports.
A new generation of strutting trades union barons, led by the RMT blowhard Mick Lynch, are becoming more powerful as a result of the shift in the balance of power between employers and employees.
The desire to assist people in finding employment is neither callous nor heartless. Unemployment can have a fatal impact on one’s health.
I have no doubt that my father’s spiral into excessive drinking and the anguish he experienced as a result of his layoff contributed to his untimely death at the age of barely 60.
If he had been given another chance to work, he could still be alive today.
Fortunately, for anyone who is willing, opportunities are far easier to come by now than they were then.
Employment experts agree that now is an excellent moment to hunt for a job, including James Reed, chairman of the nationwide recruitment firm of the same name.
Brexit was based on the idea that the UK could compete with Singapore and other fast-growing economies by leaving the EU.
If millions of individuals give up on their ambitions and careers, we won’t be able to accomplish that.
The foundation of self-respect is work, which is not just another lifestyle option but also a moral and financial necessity.
We risk losing the work ethic that Britain once had by doing so.