Thursday: benefits, squirrels and fruit bowl politics.

Today I gritted my teeth, swallowed my tea and walked two miles into town to register for unemployment benefits. This isn’t the first time I’ve signed on, and I doubt it’ll be the last dealings I have with the DWP. The last time I was officially titled 'Jobseeker' was thanks to "education, education, education". Like a lot of people my age, we were fed the ideal of education being your liberator, your passport to the world of work, so I went to university.

I graduated with my degree, followed it up with relevant work experience and then took a post-graduate diploma course to further my prospects as a modern, urban human. Education³ soon became

"employable, experienced, quite good at application forms". That excitement soon paled into nine months of unemployment, six spent on benefits. It ended well when I finally got a job. One I enjoyed, and one that led to my first career.

Writer, GSOH, WLTM new employers for meaningful employment. Contact me on Twitter for promotional posts, cute animals, and the occasional old-man-shouting-at-clouds observations.

The UK is keen to paint a picture of employment bliss. Figures from the Office of National Statistics released yesterday (17/02/16) sing the praises of the final quarter of 2015. According to the ONS, unemployment fell by 60,000 to 1.69 million in the last three months of 2015, and pay increased by 2.0%. Wowzers! It’s worth noting Christmas temporary jobs are often well underway by October, and paid hourly bonuses – let alone monstrous bankers’ bonuses – are paid out at the end of the year. Funny, that.

What I want to know is this: How many of these extra people in work are still in their jobs? I know in my old company the UK workforce would increase by roughly 2,500 to care for the extra business Christmas would bring. You only need 24 companies to recruit similar quantities of staff to quickly find the 60,000 people suddenly in temporary work.

These tiny daffodils are growing valiantly on a scrubby patch of ground beside a very busy road. Hope springs. 

This time, I’m out of work. I have several years of NI contributions on my side, but hell, do they make it complicated. Regulations are there to stop people from screwing the system, we all know that, but I just need some money. I need a haircut, for a start. There are so many options and clauses it makes your head spin.
“You can have this apple only if you don’t already have some bananas. If someone you live with has seven apples, you can’t have any. Have you been sourcing your own apples? What variety? Have you eaten them? Have you ever given one to a passing squirrel?” Incidentally, I am well up for being paid in apples. I like braeburns best.

Hopefully my adventures in unemployment will be short lived. I hope the people represented by numbers are still in work. If not, I’ll see them in the queue. But only after I’ve juggled with fruit, claim codes, and reimbursed my squirrel friends.