The government says:
- There are 2.47 million people unemployed.
- The recent budget will cause the loss of a further 1.3 million jobs.
- There are 2.6 million people on Incapacity Benefit. The government's new stringent tests are recategorising 68% of them as fit to work. This will add 1.77 million to the unemployed.
Add these three groups together and we're looking at 5.54 million people unemployed.
There are less than half a million job vacancies.
That's more than eleven people per job available.
Also included in the budget is a 10% cut in Housing Benefit for people who have been on Job Seekers Allowance for a year.
This will lead to evictions, which means moving people into temporary accommodation. The other reforms to benefits may well save money, but this one is likely to be far more expensive for the state than the 10% of housing benefit saved. It is simply punitive.
That's just the money side, before we consider the effects on people's families and mental health as they're made homeless because they can't find jobs that don't exist.
A morning in court with the Heathrow defenders
8 years ago
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