We have heard a lot about how workers are settling for shorter hours or lower wages so they can stay in work during this recession, but the annual growth rate for regular pay (excluding bonuses) went up too, from 1.2 per cent in the three months to December 2009 to 1.4 per cent in the three months to January 2010.
The statistics are difficult to interpret because the reaction to this recession has been markedly different from what it was in the early 1990s. Those who have had to accept redundancy have been prepared to settle for almost any job or series of short term jobs, if necessary, to keep some money flowing in instead of signing on & waiting for a job that suits their qualifications & experience. Because nobody wants to go near the Job Centre, get even more wrapped up in 'procedures' if they do not have to.
This course is made an easier line to take because relatively few of the unemployed will be the sole breadwinner, the family not totally dependent on what money they bring home. And the fact that mortgage interest payments are a fraction of what they would have been last time, making the loss of their home that much less likely, even without any generous government help with individual payments.
The standard of living will take a surprisingly small hit if the expenses of a journey to work in the city, smartly suited, plus all the other incidental opportunities for frittering away ones cash are no longer there. It has always been possible to shop for bargains for all the necessities – if you have the time - & time is what you have when you are not tied to a job every day.
And one’s house may actually be in better condition, as local radio & other advertising media are suddenly awash with No Job Too Small ads from qualified tradesmen deprived of all those lucrative public sector construction contracts.
Even the numbers of people who have told the labour force survey interviewers that they have become economically inactive, (are no longer looking for a job), are not unproductive; most do not just sit around watching telly all day. Jobs around the house & garden, helping out elderly neighbours, hobbies, group activities, voluntary work, informal bartering, education, looking after the grandchildren …
In other words they are filling the gap previously filled by unwaged housewives & mothers in the provision of all those non-marketised services in a world of relationship & trust where promises do not have to be supported by IOUs.
It is the young one really worries about.
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