FactCheck: Cameron nailed on job claims
The claim
“There are more people in work today than there were at the time of the last election”
David Cameron, Prime Minister’s Questions, 25 January 2012
The background
FactCheck has long been on at the PM to curb his boasts over employment. In today’s PMQs, he did water his claim down a bit (we no longer have the one about private sector job creation offsetting public sector job losses).
Has he finally got the balance right? FactCheck puts the nail in the coffin.
The analysis
David Cameron’s claim that employment has risen since the General Election of May 2010 has always rested on one crucial quarter: April-May-June of 2010.
In this quarter, there was a huge net change in private sector jobs of +311,000 (against losses in the public sector).
As the Office for National Statistics (ONS) produces these headline figures on a quarterly basis, and as the election fell bang in the middle of this quarter, Cameron has been able to ignore the matter of the separate set of “experimental” ONS statistics. This data indicates that the bulk of the jobs growth came before the election. You can read our previous FactChecks on this here.
However, today Mr Cameron didn’t make the distinction between public and private sectors. He lumped everyone together, to claim that there are more people in work now than there were at the time of the election.
For this overall figure, the ONS does have official statistics – it provides rolling averages that straddle the crucial second quarter of 2010.
These show that total employment for full-time, part-time and temporary workers over May-July 2010 was 29,145,000.
Yet in the last update, that number had fallen to 29,119,000, for the months September-November 2011.
That’s a loss of 26,000 jobs from the time of the election.
Full-time jobs are actually up 43,000, while part-time jobs have dropped by 70,000.
But don’t let the full-time figure distract you. Why? Because the number of people entering the job market during this time has continued to grow. And ONS data shows that since the election, more people are searching for part-time work because they can’t find full time work.
The number of people citing the reason for searching for part-time work because they could not find a full-time job, has risen from 1.12m to 1.3m.
The number of people taking on temporary employment because they can’t find full-time work has also risen from 570,000 to 590,000.
Simon Kirby, senior research officer at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, told FactCheck that overall, the labour market has flattened out because employers are hoarding existing staff on wage freezes.
He warned that people will find it “very difficult” to get jobs this year, as companies will delay taking on workers until they see more confidence in the economic markets.
He added: “The patterns in temporary and part-time employment add weight to the hesitancy of employers to take people on right now”.
The verdict
Official statistics show that Mr Cameron is wrong – since the election the overall number of jobs has fallen by 26,000.
While the full-time job market might be showing a small growth of 43,000, the number of part-time and temporary jobs has dropped by 70,000 since the election – yet more people are chasing them because they can’t find full-time work. In fact, year-on-year the number of people looking for part-time work because they can’t get a full-time job is up by almost 13 per cent.
As many of our Twitter followers have suggested before, with his constant slip ups on job stats, the only people Mr Cameron is managing to keep firmly in employment is the FactCheck team.
Update: Ed Miliband has written to David Cameron asking him to correct the record on his “inaccurate claims”. You can read it here.
By Emma Thelwell
Follow @FactCheck on Twitter
There are 18 comments on this post
Yesterday it was Green with benefit tourism, the day before IDS on homelessness and now DC on employment.
They’re losing the argument so they resort to telling blatant lies.
So much for transparency.. or is this what they mean’t, transparently fraudulent.
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When I was at work I had to claim extra money from the government to be able to pay my way. How is that helping the economy?
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Is the Prime Minister really trying to convince us that during this recession, unemployment has gone down?
Does he think we’re daft?
Unemployment by definition always goes up during a recession. Look back at our last recession in the late 70′s when unemployment rose to 3 million.
I recently heard that Tesco hired a football stadium in one City, to test and interview hundreds of applicants to weed out a few lucky people for shop floor assistant jobs.
I think David Cameron has forgotten to include in his figures all the people on Incapacity Benefit who he has moved onto Job Seekers Allowance since the last general election.
Unemployment will continue to rise, and well above 3 million especially when you bear in mind that all future individuals who become sick, instead of being put on the old Incapacity Benefit,will very likely be deemed not sick enough to qualify for the new replacement, more stringent benefit; Employment Support Allowance and put on Job Seekers Allowance instead. Then the Government will be back in its old unelectable position of being considered responsible for high unemployment.
What to do then to change statisics? Transfer folk from JSA to ESA…
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In the same way that I think the Captain of the Costa Concordia was being economical with the truth when he said, ‘ I just fell into the lifeboat’, so I think David Cameron is being economical with the truth regarding his claims that there are more people in work since the last General Election.
Who’s he trying to kid!
‘Get on Board’ Prime Minister, ‘do a head count and tell us exactly how many people really are unemployed.
If the Government fails to tell us the truth, how can we organize a rescue plan for those unemployed going under who need a lifeline?
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Cameron refers to a point in time (May 5th).
Why is the average running from May 1st – July 30th more accurate that the average for the period from March 1st – May 30th?
If you take the March – May numbers Cameron was correct
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Miliban got it on the nail when he said the Tories are arrogant.
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As I keep saying, politicians will continue to be distrusted until tehy actually start to tell the truth. the first party to start telling the truth consistently – even when it hurts them – will win.
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Cameron’s defence is that, if you look at the non-seasonably adjusted figures (i.e. don’t adjust for the ~90,000 increase in employment that occurs EVERY SINGLE YEAR in the run up to Xmas), employment has risen http://mrnonnymouse.blogspot.com/2012/01/fact-checking-fact-checkers.html
Statistical idiocy, but strictly speaking Cameron was completely correct. But very slippery and will be storing up problems for himself for Dec-Feb stats)
Of course, next quarter the non-seasonably adjusted statistics would become not appropriate to use (as will show a massive drop in employment due to termination of temporary annual pre-Xmas employment boom ending causing drop of ~80,000 in employment).
Has this “unfair to seasonally adjust” excuse been used to claim Q4 GDP increased yet (which it did on these terms)?
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Six months after the coalition became goverment,I attended a new-style job-seekers agreement seminar.I had been following the rules and applying for a couple of jobs a week (at least).What I found was most jobs advertised were agency jobs – roughly 8 out of 10 when I counted – or jobs offering around 5 – 12 hrs pw.I personally have never seen such a depressed jobs market in my 35 years of adulthood.The jobcentre staff even admitted to me that agency work ads made up many of jobs advertised,and told me they received a lot of complaints involving these companys.
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So why did the PM make this almost inconsequential mistake? Has Downing Street explained?
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[...] And - just for the record – here are the sources: 1) Employment statistics: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lms/labour-market-statistics/january-2012/table-a02.xls And see also: http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/factcheck-cameron-nailed-on-job-claims/9250 [...]
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We already had 1 minister taken to task for misleading statistics in the last 24 hours. It seems Cameron, contrary to ONS recommendations, may well have been using raw figures rather than the seasonally adjusted.
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[...] Jobs claims debunked – Fact [...]
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Danny Alexander was at it last night, dismissing unfavourable stats by saying there are bound to be ups and downs from month to month. Funny how he’s always happy to take credit for the ups.
Presumably the only reason Ed Miliband is not using factcheck figures to hammer Cameron is that he knows he too is fiddling the figures?
They are all so busy playing politics i.e defending their own jobs, they don’t have time to sort out the country.
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Hi Sam, Emma from FactCheck here. Actually Ed Miliband has asked the PM to correct the figures: http://www.edmiliband.org/prime-ministers-inaccurate-claims We have asked for a response/explanation from Number 10 but have heard nothing back. Best, Emma
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Just take a look at the UKSA web-site – http://www.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/ – under “Correspondence” to see the number of times Sir Michael Scholar has had to rebuke, in particular, IDS, Lansley and Grayling, whether in Opposition or in Government for mis-use of official statistics
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Problem is that everyone is focused on ‘creating jobs’. When what is needed is to focus on ‘maximising production’, which in its turn ‘creates wealth’ and ‘jobs’. ‘Jobs’ are a cost, not a benefit. Cameron is ignorant of that, or pretends to be…
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“Fooling some of the people some of the time” is a very dangerous game to play in our age of instant communication.
“Some of the people” soon disappear into the majority and “some of the time” becomes a very short period indeed.
I’m waiting for a politician who will tell people the unvarnished truth. But although I think the majority (at least the educated majority) are ready to accept that – our media are certainly not.
The positive frenzy of delight in the media if a politician admits he has made a mistake or things are not going very well – is insane and damaging to our democracy. Everybody makes mistakes.
Every businessman makes plans that fail. Sensible businesses allow for that, and try to reduce so-called “blame” cultures. They do it for very good commercial reasons, risk averse companies fail. Risk is necessary for progress.
Somehow, we insist on seeing our politicians as demigods incapable of error. Any admission of error is seen as a major fall from grace. Against this deranged background noise is it any wonder politicians lie and dissemble when things go wrong – we force them into it!
So I’m waiting for the One. But I’m not holding my…
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