Accepting your own powerlessness is a characteristic of weak leaders throughout history: always managing, never transforming.
It’s not only a true description of Welsh political leadership now and over many decades, but the article it comes from exposes the seeming paralysis of David Cameron and Barack Obama's leadership in the face of the social and economic challenges have been thrown up over the past few weeks and months.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Scottish Cabinet meeting about financial crisis, Alex Salmond wants economic Plan B, so what’s happening in Wales?
I have already asked if the First Minister is monitoring events of the financial crisis and what if anything he and his colleagues could do to help Welsh business and households who are suffering as a result, but not for the first time it’s his Scottish counterpart who really puts into sharp focus Carwyn Jones lack of leadership and inaction during the ongoing crisis.
On Monday (8th August) the Scotsman reported ‘First Minister Alex Salmond has called for a "Plan B" to protect Scotland's economy during the global economic crisis.
Mr Salmond made the call as his SNP cabinet was due to discuss economic recovery during a meeting in Stranraer today as part of a summer tour of Scotland.
The First Minister repeated the SNP's flagship demand for increased fiscal responsibilities - such as enhanced borrowing and tax powers - for the Scottish Parliament.
Mr Salmond said: "Governments have to focus on the issues that matter to people during this uncertain international situation and that means jobs and economic recovery.
"The idea that exports alone can pull the economy into greater growth is far fetched.
"Therefore we need a domestic stimulus and one which will not cause jitters in the financial markets.
"The best way to do that is to focus on capital investment and consumer and company confidence.
"These are the measures that the Scottish Government is bringing forward within the powers that we have.
"However, what Scotland really needs is the greater ability to grow our economy and create jobs. The UK Chancellor has to realise that changing events require changes in policy."
Today's cabinet meeting comes after Mr Salmond appealed for cross party backing over plans to give Scottish ministers a statutory role in European Union discussions.'
Added to that the South Wales Chamber of Commerce has today reported that business growth slowed during the second quarter of 2011 among retail and construction business in Cardiff, Swansea and Newport, its more evidence of the challenges they face and the lack of interest there remains in Welsh Government circles to help Welsh business large and small through the tough economic times we face.
On Monday (8th August) the Scotsman reported ‘First Minister Alex Salmond has called for a "Plan B" to protect Scotland's economy during the global economic crisis.
Mr Salmond made the call as his SNP cabinet was due to discuss economic recovery during a meeting in Stranraer today as part of a summer tour of Scotland.
The First Minister repeated the SNP's flagship demand for increased fiscal responsibilities - such as enhanced borrowing and tax powers - for the Scottish Parliament.
Mr Salmond said: "Governments have to focus on the issues that matter to people during this uncertain international situation and that means jobs and economic recovery.
"The idea that exports alone can pull the economy into greater growth is far fetched.
"Therefore we need a domestic stimulus and one which will not cause jitters in the financial markets.
"The best way to do that is to focus on capital investment and consumer and company confidence.
"These are the measures that the Scottish Government is bringing forward within the powers that we have.
"However, what Scotland really needs is the greater ability to grow our economy and create jobs. The UK Chancellor has to realise that changing events require changes in policy."
Today's cabinet meeting comes after Mr Salmond appealed for cross party backing over plans to give Scottish ministers a statutory role in European Union discussions.'
Added to that the South Wales Chamber of Commerce has today reported that business growth slowed during the second quarter of 2011 among retail and construction business in Cardiff, Swansea and Newport, its more evidence of the challenges they face and the lack of interest there remains in Welsh Government circles to help Welsh business large and small through the tough economic times we face.
Monday, August 8, 2011
The Hourglass and the Escalator, labour market change and mobility
The second report from the Work Foundation in its series on The Bottom Ten Million, entitled The Hourglass and the Escalator, labour market change and mobility, looking at the prospects those UK workers on incomes of less than £15,000 per annum between now and 2020 and seeks to identify the priority measures that need to be taken if they are to share in the sources of growth and prosperity over the next decade, as well as identifying the huge changes in the Labour Market was published last month and highlights the challenges for policy makers looking to improve the lives of those at the bottom of the work ladder.
Rather than try and summarise the report the Executive Summary is below and the full report is here
The past decade has been a period of considerable change in the labour market, in particular in the latter years when the economy has experienced recession and emerging recovery. Over the longer-term, as the economy has been increasingly based on knowledge rather than routine production, new jobs have been created in large numbers in high-skill, high-wage professional and managerial occupations. Yet the last decade has also seen growth in lower wage service occupations, combined with a reduction in middle-wage occupations, leading to concerns of employment polarisation. In short, there appears to be a gradual hollowing-out of the labour market.
This hollowing-out has lead some commentators to talk of the labour market as being increasingly structured like an hourglass, and bifurcated into good and bad jobs. This report investigates the evidence and implications of these changes in the labour market. It finds evidence for employment polarisation, with technological change reducing the demand for routine workers in administrative and secretarial, and process, plant and machine operative occupations.
The process of labour market change and polarisation has tended to be experienced differently by men and women. For men in the 2000s the growth in employment share was solely among the three highest wage and the three lowest wage occupations. For women there was very strong growth in employment in professional occupations, supported in large part by increasing public sector employment. There was also strong growth in personal service occupations.
However, changes in the labour market have not resulted in the sharp increases in wage inequality which were seen in the 1980s and 1990s.
For men wage inequality did increase somewhat in the 2000s, and this was driven by the faster growth in wages at the top. For women wage inequality was stable over the period.
The recent recession was not the white-collar recession that many commentators were predicting.
Employment in professional occupations continued to grow through the recession and into the recovery (although managerial employment has contracted in the early recovery). The large-scale job losses in the recession were in routine manual and non-manual occupations, with the recession accelerating the structural changes which were already reducing these occupations in size. In the early recovery, alongside an increase in professional jobs there has also been growth in the numbers of elementary jobs – jobs which tend to be unskilled and low-wage. This is important because although the economy has begun creating jobs, a significant number of these are in the low-wage occupations, meaning that those who lose jobs in relatively better paid and more skilled occupations may have to take work at a lower wage and skill level.
The least skilled have suffered in the recession as people with more skills ‘bump-down’ in the labour market. The pattern of employment growth in the early recovery has important implications for those least able to compete for jobs. The employment rate for those with no qualifications fell markedly during the recession, as competition for entry level posts has become intense, with those leaving relatively more skilled jobs competing for those jobs which are available.
One of the potentially damaging aspects of growing polarisation in the labour market is that it may create additional barriers to earnings mobility. Estimates from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) suggest that around a third of those in the bottom ten per cent of earners in 2001/2 were still there in 2008/9, and that more than 60 per cent remained in the bottom three deciles. The
BHPS also shows that women and those with no qualifications were significantly more likely to remain stuck at the bottom of the earnings distribution. There is therefore concern that in many cases low wage work is not acting as an ‘escalator’ into employment which offers better wages and prospects, but is instead a dead-end.
In order to support in-work progression for low earners, policy makers should:
• Identify ways to improve and upgrade service sector employment. Emerging work
in Canada and the US has driven an ambitious call to ‘upgrade’ and improve low-wage
service work so that it offers more in terms of better wages, job satisfaction and opportunity for progression. This is something that has clear attractions, and the potential for such an approach should be given serious consideration in the UK context.
• Work with employers, sector skills councils and training providers to develop career ladders. In some sectors career ladders which offer clear paths for in-work progression can help to significantly boost earnings mobility and ensure individuals are not trapped in dead-end jobs.
• Ensure good quality careers advice is available. In sectors where career ladders are not likely to be effective in engendering earning mobility, workers can be supported to progress through mobility between jobs. Careers advice can help to facilitate this but it needs to be more visible to those already in employment.
• Promote lifelong learning. Upgrading qualifications is associated with increasing earnings.A key challenge is to foster a culture of learning among individuals once in the workplace, as well as to encourage employers to support workers learning needs.Recent changes in the labour market have also created some specific policy needs going forward:
• Facilitate the sector swap. A significant component of public sector employment growth in the past decade has been in professional occupations. In the context of large cuts to public expenditure there is therefore a rationale for a public sector skills programme to ensure that skills developed in the public sector are effectively transferred into private sector employment.
• Re-skill and re-train. Structural changes in the economy mean that when some people lose their job a return to the same, or a similar, occupation is unlikely. There is currently relatively little support available for those who require fuller re-training. To facilitate this there may be a case for providing greater flexibility in the benefits system to allow individuals to retrain.
Rather than try and summarise the report the Executive Summary is below and the full report is here
The past decade has been a period of considerable change in the labour market, in particular in the latter years when the economy has experienced recession and emerging recovery. Over the longer-term, as the economy has been increasingly based on knowledge rather than routine production, new jobs have been created in large numbers in high-skill, high-wage professional and managerial occupations. Yet the last decade has also seen growth in lower wage service occupations, combined with a reduction in middle-wage occupations, leading to concerns of employment polarisation. In short, there appears to be a gradual hollowing-out of the labour market.
This hollowing-out has lead some commentators to talk of the labour market as being increasingly structured like an hourglass, and bifurcated into good and bad jobs. This report investigates the evidence and implications of these changes in the labour market. It finds evidence for employment polarisation, with technological change reducing the demand for routine workers in administrative and secretarial, and process, plant and machine operative occupations.
The process of labour market change and polarisation has tended to be experienced differently by men and women. For men in the 2000s the growth in employment share was solely among the three highest wage and the three lowest wage occupations. For women there was very strong growth in employment in professional occupations, supported in large part by increasing public sector employment. There was also strong growth in personal service occupations.
However, changes in the labour market have not resulted in the sharp increases in wage inequality which were seen in the 1980s and 1990s.
For men wage inequality did increase somewhat in the 2000s, and this was driven by the faster growth in wages at the top. For women wage inequality was stable over the period.
The recent recession was not the white-collar recession that many commentators were predicting.
Employment in professional occupations continued to grow through the recession and into the recovery (although managerial employment has contracted in the early recovery). The large-scale job losses in the recession were in routine manual and non-manual occupations, with the recession accelerating the structural changes which were already reducing these occupations in size. In the early recovery, alongside an increase in professional jobs there has also been growth in the numbers of elementary jobs – jobs which tend to be unskilled and low-wage. This is important because although the economy has begun creating jobs, a significant number of these are in the low-wage occupations, meaning that those who lose jobs in relatively better paid and more skilled occupations may have to take work at a lower wage and skill level.
The least skilled have suffered in the recession as people with more skills ‘bump-down’ in the labour market. The pattern of employment growth in the early recovery has important implications for those least able to compete for jobs. The employment rate for those with no qualifications fell markedly during the recession, as competition for entry level posts has become intense, with those leaving relatively more skilled jobs competing for those jobs which are available.
One of the potentially damaging aspects of growing polarisation in the labour market is that it may create additional barriers to earnings mobility. Estimates from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) suggest that around a third of those in the bottom ten per cent of earners in 2001/2 were still there in 2008/9, and that more than 60 per cent remained in the bottom three deciles. The
BHPS also shows that women and those with no qualifications were significantly more likely to remain stuck at the bottom of the earnings distribution. There is therefore concern that in many cases low wage work is not acting as an ‘escalator’ into employment which offers better wages and prospects, but is instead a dead-end.
In order to support in-work progression for low earners, policy makers should:
• Identify ways to improve and upgrade service sector employment. Emerging work
in Canada and the US has driven an ambitious call to ‘upgrade’ and improve low-wage
service work so that it offers more in terms of better wages, job satisfaction and opportunity for progression. This is something that has clear attractions, and the potential for such an approach should be given serious consideration in the UK context.
• Work with employers, sector skills councils and training providers to develop career ladders. In some sectors career ladders which offer clear paths for in-work progression can help to significantly boost earnings mobility and ensure individuals are not trapped in dead-end jobs.
• Ensure good quality careers advice is available. In sectors where career ladders are not likely to be effective in engendering earning mobility, workers can be supported to progress through mobility between jobs. Careers advice can help to facilitate this but it needs to be more visible to those already in employment.
• Promote lifelong learning. Upgrading qualifications is associated with increasing earnings.A key challenge is to foster a culture of learning among individuals once in the workplace, as well as to encourage employers to support workers learning needs.Recent changes in the labour market have also created some specific policy needs going forward:
• Facilitate the sector swap. A significant component of public sector employment growth in the past decade has been in professional occupations. In the context of large cuts to public expenditure there is therefore a rationale for a public sector skills programme to ensure that skills developed in the public sector are effectively transferred into private sector employment.
• Re-skill and re-train. Structural changes in the economy mean that when some people lose their job a return to the same, or a similar, occupation is unlikely. There is currently relatively little support available for those who require fuller re-training. To facilitate this there may be a case for providing greater flexibility in the benefits system to allow individuals to retrain.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)