Unemployment Hitting The Middleaged
December 26, 2008 by paulsmerry
Filed under Articles
I was talking to a neighbor the other day. We hadn’t been able to talk for a while. You know how it is we pass each other and just have time to say hello. The other day though I was bent over my car engine doing a bit of tinkering and he pulled up behind me. We started talking. He told me he’d been laid off a month ago after working for the same company for twenty-one-years. He’s in his late forties so he knew getting another job would not be easy.
He earned over nine pounds an hour in his last job and his household expenses were such that he could not take a huge drop in pay. On visiting the job centre. The first time he has ever visited it in his life, never having being unemployed before. He was shocked to see the only jobs on offer were paying the minimum wage.
When he pointed out to the woman who was interviewing him that he could not live on such a low wage, that it would just about pay his mortgage, she shrugged and explained to him that he’d be lucky to get anything better. She told him there were a few casual jobs available through agencies that she could place him with.
He again explained that he couldn’t live on the minimum wage, it would not cover his monthly bills. She told him in that case he would have to try to find a job himself but he had to report to her to check on his progress. My neighbour was shocked at the low wages on offer for experienced people.
My neighbour has just come face-to-face with the new economy created by successive governments. It’s a low wage economy, deliberately created by our governments. They have used threats, mass immigration and outsourcing to drive down wages to such an extent that they are now unliveable wages. The so-called “experts” who have created this disaster are then cutting VAT to encourage people to spend more. Well to all you experts out there, busy pulling the levers trying to kick start the economy. The solution is simple increase the minimum wage to an amount that people can survive on.
And when I say people I mean real people. Not some pathetic politician who claims he can easily live on the current minimum wage for a week. The economics are simple. People have stopped spending because they don’t have any spare money to spend once they’ve paid all their bills. I asked my neighbour what he was going to do. He shrugged and said he didn’t know but he wasn’t working for the minimum wage. As the economy gets worse, and the only jobs on offer are so low paid they are pointless. It’s becoming more important than ever that we have a plan ready to help ourselves because no one else will help us. Least of all that corrupt self-seeking bunch of politicians who form our government.
