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It isn't. You are saying it "should"...wages in the UK are rising 4% slower than inflation, so there is real erosion of wages WHILST there is the biggest labour

It isn't. You are saying it "should"...wages in the UK are rising 4% slower than inflation, so there is real erosion of wages WHILST there is the biggest labour shortage in the history of the UK. Just speaking generally, labour tends to be a market in which there is massive govt intervention (this is particularly the case in the UK). The normal rules of economics do not hold. One very big factor in the UK is universal credit. You can Google this for yourself but the relevance here is that it acts as a wage subsidy for employers, this gets people into work but there is very little incentive to work more hours (despite the govt being able to remove universal credit from people who refuse to work more). The UK has got read of the persistently high unemployment under left-wing govts of the 2000s but has failed to improve productivity. We employ more people but they are barely producing more on aggregate. Immigration, more women working (universal credit generally supports more women more), it is all coalescing, nothing is working properly.

pjc50 4y ago
Universal credit is terrible: people on UC are significantly more likely to not be able to afford food and rent. https://www.trusselltrust.org/what-we-do/research-advocacy/universal-credit-and-foodbank-use/ https://www.trusselltrust.org/what-we-do/research-advocacy/u... > We employ more people but they are barely producing more on aggregate Yes, and this is a management/underinvestment problem. Either better working practices need to be introduced or capital investment to substitute for labour.
- skippyboxedhero 4y ago
  ...right because universal credit is a benefit target at poor people. Almost everyone who is on universal credit will receive a rent subsidy too (add it up: employer subsidy, landlord subsidy...everything is subsidized). The main issue with UC is that it is too generous and significantly reduces the incentive to work (and btw, UC was introduced specifically to increase the incentive to work and get rid of structural unemployment...it did the latter but has failed totally at the former...all we did is give employers a wage subsidy, and it didn't actually lead to more productivity or more anything). No, it isn't. Because labour is not a substitute for a machine, you can get rid of a worker for a machine but a machine doesn't vote, can't riot, etc. You still need to feed and clothe a human. The UK has, literally, millions of people who need work and will be unable to support themselves with the economy at the current size. I don't know what the solution is, but we won't be able to grow our way out of this (we tried in the early 2010s, it didn't work, we tried in the 2000s, it didn't work). One issue is that we spend massive amounts of money on subsidies but don't invest in skills (a lot of the problem today is with older people...so improving education won't work there). The scale of the underemployment is probably ~5m people...in a working population of 32m...it is far bigger than people think AND we are bringing 1m people a year into the economy whose fertility is significantly higher...it is a very big problem.
  - pjc50 4y ago
    > and it didn't actually lead to more productivity or more anything Yes, and this is a demonstration that benefit cuts to starve people into working are not going to work. > main issue with UC is that it is too generous People at the foodbank are not going to agree with this. > scale of the underemployment is probably ~5m people...in a working population of 32m [citation needed] > don't invest in skills This I can agree on. > The UK has, literally, millions of people who need work The headline is "labour shortage"? There's no evidence of a vast hidden army of the unemployed, this isn't the 1980s.
    - skippyboxedhero 4y ago
      And giving someone a wage subsidy for low-paid work hasn't worked either. Ask any person whether they deserve to earn more? Your point is completely devoid of any attempt to reason objectively. We have a minimum income system already (UC was designed to be a taper like NIT or UBI). People are quite happy to accept free food if it is being offered, but look at how much we spend on welfare...it is staggering (if you look at stats on food bank usage, you will also see that usage is highest amongst groups i.e. single people who don't receive the really valuable UC benefits i.e. CTCs...food bank usage is generally terribly uninformative though because if you give free food, people will take it). Yes there is evidence of a hidden army of unemployed, that is why I mentioned repeatedly that people often don't understand. If you are familiar with DWP stats, you would know that unemployment benefit is now being phased out totally. But some people on UC who do not work are not recorded as unemployed (this numbers 3.9m). And there is evidence that a lot of the people on ESA are claiming because they are also unable to work (at least, 500k iirc). And, of course, the point of UC was to get people back into work...but it has led to people earning £15k/year working min wage for 10 hours/week, that gap is money that would have been unemployment twenty years ago but isn't now. So we have swapped paying unemployment for a wage subsidy...again, you don't appear to understand this, the point was: we will pay people to work rather than sit on the dole (through offering a subsidy that lifts low wage), this should have led to more output...it didn't. Btw, this is all obvious without having detailed knowledge of DWP statistics...you are saying how desperately poor everyone is...unemployment is the lowest it has been for five decades, how does that make sense to you? Wage growth is 4% below inflation, how does that make sense to you? Just saying lol, increase productivity...okay, that is what UC was for...this has been tried before, the problem is that there far too many people in the UK and not enough work (it is zero-sum because population growth is so far in excess of productivity growth).
VLM 4y ago
> real erosion of wages WHILST there is the biggest labour shortage in the history 1970s style "stagflation". That term is coming back.

pjc50 4y ago

Universal credit is terrible: people on UC are significantly more likely to not be able to afford food and rent. https://www.trusselltrust.org/what-we-do/research-advocacy/universal-credit-and-foodbank-use/ https://www.trusselltrust.org/what-we-do/research-advocacy/u... > We employ more people but they are barely producing more on aggregate Yes, and this is a management/underinvestment problem. Either better working practices need to be introduced or capital investment to substitute for labour.

skippyboxedhero 4y ago
...right because universal credit is a benefit target at poor people. Almost everyone who is on universal credit will receive a rent subsidy too (add it up: employer subsidy, landlord subsidy...everything is subsidized). The main issue with UC is that it is too generous and significantly reduces the incentive to work (and btw, UC was introduced specifically to increase the incentive to work and get rid of structural unemployment...it did the latter but has failed totally at the former...all we did is give employers a wage subsidy, and it didn't actually lead to more productivity or more anything). No, it isn't. Because labour is not a substitute for a machine, you can get rid of a worker for a machine but a machine doesn't vote, can't riot, etc. You still need to feed and clothe a human. The UK has, literally, millions of people who need work and will be unable to support themselves with the economy at the current size. I don't know what the solution is, but we won't be able to grow our way out of this (we tried in the early 2010s, it didn't work, we tried in the 2000s, it didn't work). One issue is that we spend massive amounts of money on subsidies but don't invest in skills (a lot of the problem today is with older people...so improving education won't work there). The scale of the underemployment is probably ~5m people...in a working population of 32m...it is far bigger than people think AND we are bringing 1m people a year into the economy whose fertility is significantly higher...it is a very big problem.
- pjc50 4y ago
  > and it didn't actually lead to more productivity or more anything Yes, and this is a demonstration that benefit cuts to starve people into working are not going to work. > main issue with UC is that it is too generous People at the foodbank are not going to agree with this. > scale of the underemployment is probably ~5m people...in a working population of 32m [citation needed] > don't invest in skills This I can agree on. > The UK has, literally, millions of people who need work The headline is "labour shortage"? There's no evidence of a vast hidden army of the unemployed, this isn't the 1980s.
  - skippyboxedhero 4y ago
    And giving someone a wage subsidy for low-paid work hasn't worked either. Ask any person whether they deserve to earn more? Your point is completely devoid of any attempt to reason objectively. We have a minimum income system already (UC was designed to be a taper like NIT or UBI). People are quite happy to accept free food if it is being offered, but look at how much we spend on welfare...it is staggering (if you look at stats on food bank usage, you will also see that usage is highest amongst groups i.e. single people who don't receive the really valuable UC benefits i.e. CTCs...food bank usage is generally terribly uninformative though because if you give free food, people will take it). Yes there is evidence of a hidden army of unemployed, that is why I mentioned repeatedly that people often don't understand. If you are familiar with DWP stats, you would know that unemployment benefit is now being phased out totally. But some people on UC who do not work are not recorded as unemployed (this numbers 3.9m). And there is evidence that a lot of the people on ESA are claiming because they are also unable to work (at least, 500k iirc). And, of course, the point of UC was to get people back into work...but it has led to people earning £15k/year working min wage for 10 hours/week, that gap is money that would have been unemployment twenty years ago but isn't now. So we have swapped paying unemployment for a wage subsidy...again, you don't appear to understand this, the point was: we will pay people to work rather than sit on the dole (through offering a subsidy that lifts low wage), this should have led to more output...it didn't. Btw, this is all obvious without having detailed knowledge of DWP statistics...you are saying how desperately poor everyone is...unemployment is the lowest it has been for five decades, how does that make sense to you? Wage growth is 4% below inflation, how does that make sense to you? Just saying lol, increase productivity...okay, that is what UC was for...this has been tried before, the problem is that there far too many people in the UK and not enough work (it is zero-sum because population growth is so far in excess of productivity growth).

VLM 4y ago

> real erosion of wages WHILST there is the biggest labour shortage in the history 1970s style "stagflation". That term is coming back.