Ben Baumberg has written the best brief summary of what can be learnt from the Employment Retention and Advancement Demonstration Project, which tried to help lone parents and long-term unemployed people who got jobs to keep them and to move on to better pay with training, advice, guidance and cash bonuses.
For lone parents, there was little short-and no long-term impact.
For long-term unemployed people, the project was very good at getting people into work, which increased their incomes and reduced costs to the government, but it seems that ERA did very little to increase the earnings of people in-work.
This is a major cause of poverty and social exclusion. What is more, because we still haven't succeeded in designing policies that can be shown to work it remains an important area where we don't have an evidence-based policy agenda.

Great article by ETUI’s Andrew Watt which exposes the facile and nasty suggestion that UK unemployment – or EU unemployment for that matter – is the result of lazy unemployed people. Unless, that is, people get lazier in recessions and less lazy in booms!

A new report from Barnardo’s looking at the 16-19 Bursary Fund – the government’s replacement for Educational Maintenance Allowances. The charity finds that lower levels of money and the fact that it is harder to access the fund “are forcing many young people to consider dropping out of education and training altogether due to financial hardship” others are suffering severe hardship – going without meals, for instance – to stay in their courses. The inadequacy of the Fund makes it much harder for the government to achieve its objective of promoting social mobility through education.
Four groups are guaranteed access to the Fund – people in care and care leavers, disabled people and young people who have left home and receive Income Support. But other groups of disadvantaged young people – especially young carers – are losing out. Barnardo’s recommends that there should be a £1,1140 bursary for all young people who have previously been on free school meals.

NIESR expects global growth of 3.5% in 2012 & 4% in 2013 (provided there is a ‘successful resolution’ of the Euro Area crisis.) Despite this, NIESR expect a mild recession in the Euro Area and the UK, with the UK economy contracting by 0.1% this year – but growing 2.3% in 2013 (provided the Euro crisis ends well).
Unemployment is expected to reach 9% this year and stay high till after the next election: “Unemployment at this elevated level for such a long period is likely to do permanent damage to the supply side of the economy, with large long-run economic costs.”
CPI inflation is expected to fall to 2.2% this year and 1.4% in 2013. The cyclically adjusted current budget is forecast to return to balance in 2016–17.
“The UK economy currently suffers from deficient demand; the current stance of fiscal policy is contributing to this deficiency. A temporary easing of fiscal policy in the near term would boost the economy.”

At the IFS website Robert Joyce considers the benefit cap in the Welfare Reform Bill. This is now expected to affect about 67,000 households from 2013-14, reducing their benefit entitlement by an average £83 p.w.
“How could households be in receipt of more than £500 per week in benefits? Put simply, they must have either a large number of children or high housing costs (or both).”
If the government believes some families get too high a level of benefits, then “it must believe that some benefit rates are inappropriately high. The best-targeted response would surely be … cutting the amount families receive for having large numbers of children and/or reducing the value of housing costs against which people can claim Housing Benefit.”
Doing this would “force the Government to think carefully about (and be explicit about) the features of the current benefits system that it considers inappropriate.”

An excellent post from the Engineering Employers' Federation, showing that feeble household spending lies behind the UK's very weak recovery.

A page of resources from the Children's Society on how the "benefit cap" will hit children. Did you know that if the government reverses the Lords amendments, 70 per cent of the people who lolse out because of the cap will be children?
Or that 80,000 children could be made homeless?

A German research paper looking at Germany and the UK shows that “work-hour mismatches (i.e., differences between actual and desired hours) have negative effects on workers´ health. In particular, we show that ‘overemployment’ – working more hours than desired − has negative effects on different measures of self-perceived health.”

“Variable pay for performance, while it may seem attractive in theory, creates more problems than it solves. There’s no proof that it helps achieve its intended purposes, and other approaches not only work better but also strengthen employee loyalty.”Four “inescapable flaws”:
1. Impossible to say in advance what tasks will need to be done precisely enough to set the parameters for payment.
2. Workers spend their time & energy on meeting the criteria (which they often find easy because they know the specifics of their jobs better than anyone else.)
3. And they focus exclusively on tasks covered by the criteria and neglect other important tasks.
4. Performance pay tends to crowd out intrinsic motivation – which supports innovation and encourages beyond-the-ordinary contributions.

In January, domestic and export orders and deliveries were down on the previous month. Optimisim about the business situation and export prospects still very low and investment intentions for buildings and plant/machinery are negative (but positive for product and process innovation and training and retraining.)
By far the biggest factor likely to limit capital expenditure authorisation is “uncertainty about demand”, quoted by 61% of respondents.
But manufacturers do expect an improvement in output and export orders and CBI says there is some reason for being a little more optimistic, especially in the light of improving US performance.

The CBI’s monthly survey finds shoppers cutting their spending after Christmas and sales falling. 44% of retailers reported sales volumes falling from a year ago and 22% saw them increase. The net balance of -22% was the lowest since March 2009.

In January, domestic and export orders and deliveries were down on the previous month. Optimisim about the business situation and export prospects still very low and investment intentions for buildings and plant/machinery are negative (but positive for product and process innovation and training and retraining.)
By far the biggest factor likely to limit capital expenditure authorisation is “uncertainty about demand”, quoted by 61% of respondents.
But manufacturers do expect an improvement in output and export orders and CBI says there is some reason for being a little more optimistic, especially in the light of improving US performance.

The CBI's monthly survey finds shoppers cutting their spending after Christmas and sales falling. 44% of retailers reported sales volumes falling from a year ago and 22% saw them increase. The net balance of -22% was the lowest since March 2009.

The Independent Living Fund makes cash payments directly to disabled people to help them to to live in their communities rather than in residential care.
Maria Miller, Minister for Disabled People, has said that, although funding for existing users will be protected for the life of this parliament the ILF is closed to new applicants. Eventually, the government plans to replace the ILF with a new system that will be part of the eventual reforms of Adult Social Care.
Disabled users, care workers, families and the ILF staff are worried.
Calum Wiley is a disabled person who relies on ILF and he has set up this campaign to challenge the government's decision and win support for a petition to Save the ILF: http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/24368

Alastair Hatchett takes apart ten myths about regional pay on the Public Finance Blog

NCVO reports that: 79% of Work Programme sub-contractors said their prime contractor was not adequately shielding them from financial risk; A majority were not satisfied with the level of Work Programme referrals they had received from their prime contractor; 55% said their prime contractor had not included them in the wider commissioning process (identifying need, design of services and evaluation) at all and 25% had been included only “to a small extent.”; Over a third – 36% – said they had observed examples of creaming and parking of clients (8% said they had observed “many” examples.)

An IPPR study shows that, statistically, there is only a weak relationship between CEO pay and company performance among FTSE 100 companies. Sectors experiencing similar improvements in company value saw very different increases in CEO remuneration. "These findings undermine the argument that company directors must be paid large and increasing amounts in order to secure the strong performance of their companies."

Study of 27 countries finds "repeated temporary contracts have a significant negative impact on health."

The Children’s Commissioner for England says something we’ve been arguing for years: “The failure of parents or carers to comply with conditions on benefits or take up the incentives offered in the Bill does not affect the Government’s children’s rights obligations, including the requirements to provide social security and an adequate standard of living for all children.”
We’ve also been arguing that: “Benefit levels have for some years been consistently below the poverty line (60% of median income) and the Minimum Income Standards. This has a serious impact on the rights of children.”
The Benefit Cap will cause “an increase in child poverty, with associated poor health, educational and other outcomes”.

This report by Citizens’ Advice on Employment and Support Allowance work capability assessment reports finds that far too many are inaccurate.People who could not reasonably be expected to seek work, are found fit for work. People who might be able to work but would need a lot of help are denied benefit – which means they don’t get that help. Many of these people are too ill to get JSA and are left with no money.
The report points out that, if the system was working well, appeals would mainly be about marginal cases where the claimant was just short of the points needed to qualify. In fact, 39% of appeals are decided in favour of the claimant and, of these, 60 per cent were originally awarded no points at all. Citizens’ Advice carried out a detailed analysis of 37 WCA reports. 16 had a serious level of inaccuracy & 10 a medium level of inaccuracy – enough to have a detrimental effect on an award.

From End Child Poverty, a map showing the proportion of children who are poor across the UK, with a breakdown for local authorities and parliamentary constituencies. In Bethnal Green and Bow, 51% of children are poor; in Nick Clegg’s Sheffield Hallam, just 5%.

The British Chambers of Commerce say their survey’s results are “disappointing” and “give cause for concern”. Results are not as bad as during the depths of the recession, but “the improvement seen in recent years has mostly been wiped out”.
The balance for manufacturing home orders was -13%, the worst since Q2 2009. For services it was -9%, the worst since Q3 2009. The balance for manufacturing export orders was positive – +5% – but this was the weakest level since Q3 2009. The balance for service export orders was -1%. Manufacturing employment expectations fell to -8%, the worst since Q2 2009. For services the figure was +2%, the lowest since Q3 2010. Investment intentions are particularly important for recovery hopes and the manufacturing investment balance fell to +5%, the lowest level since Q1 2010. For service firms the balance rose 1 point, to +2%, “still a very weak level.”

Matt Cavanagh, on the New Statesman's blog, takes apart the Migration Watch report that links youth unemployment and immigration. He points out: 1. Migration Watch blames youth unemployment lon the decision to open up the UK labour market to Eastern European nationals in 2004, but youth unemployment started rising two years earlier, in 2002; 2. The peak period for rising youth unemployment was 2008-9, when nothing new was happening in immigration, but the recession was biting hardest; 3. Other countries that have had a steep increase in youth unemployment, like Spain and Greece, haven't seen big rises in immigration. Germany has had high immigration, but low youth unemployment.

A forthcoming study from researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, finds that people in lower socio-economic classes are quicker to express compassion than better-off people. Lead researcher Jennifer Stellar comments: “These latest results indicate that there’s a culture of compassion and cooperation among lower-class individuals that may be born out of threats to their wellbeing … Upper-class individuals appear to be more self-focused, they’ve grown up with more freedom and autonomy … They may do better in an individualist, competitive environment.”

Simon Chouffot of the Robin Hood Tax campaign spells out why a European Financial Transactions Tax would not end up in the Commission’s coffers, and how joining in would be better for Britain than staying out.

The union-backed Economic Policy Institute has a good analysis of the jobs data that came out of the USA today. The US economy put on 200,000 jobs in December, and the unemploymentrate has dropped from 9.9% two years ago to 8.5%. However, the EPI estimates that at this rate of job growth it will still take until 2019 for employment to recover to the level itwould have reached without the recession.

Our colleagues in the Nigerian trade union movement protest again against fuel price hikes. They have to do this every few years because the Government of the oil-producing country – whose people see barely a fraction of the benefit of producing so much fuel – has mismanaged its energy policy so badly for decades. Solidarity with the NLC and NTUC!

Hugh writes on Stronger Unions about David Cameron’s latest plans to ‘kill off’ the UK’s supposed health and safety culture.

Research by the IFS for the Family and Parenting Institute looks at likely poverty rates and incomes for different family types up to 2015. Families with children will see the biggest fall in income – down 4.2% in the 5 years to 2015; incomes for families without children will fall 0.9%. Families with children younger than 5 or with more than 2 children, and unemployed lone parents will suffer most. Half a million families with children under 5 will fall into absolute poverty by 2015-16 and the benefit changes are an important cause – though this will be partly offset by the introduction of Universal Credit.

Survey by Save the Children finds that 54% of all parents are worried their children’s health will suffer because their house is too cold this winter; 59% are having to cut back on other essentials to afford their fuel bills this winter; half of all families plan to turn the heating off for longer to keep their bills down. Cold, damp homes can cause developmental and chronic health problems for children. Rising energy costs are particularly tough for low-income families but energy companies are drastically under-funding the government’s Warm Homes Discount scheme that provides a discount of up to £140. The government only requires the energy companies to fund the scheme for poor pensioners – support for poor families with children is discretionary and hundreds of thousands don’t receive it.

Unite's Tony Burke reports on union pressure for a Robin Hood Tax in Germany: highlighting a joint press conference by DGB President Michael Sommer and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. David Cameron maintains that a European FTT would uniquely disadvantage the UK, but Germany has the second-biggest financial transactions market in the EU, so Germany would – if Cameron was right – also be a net loser. If only Cameron was less in hock to the financiers of the City! (And if he was less anti-trade union, maybe he could do joint press conferences with the TUC!)

Construction industry figures pick holes in the government's infrastructure plans: actual government capital investment will fall £14bn over the next 3 years, because of the much bigger cuts in the 2010 CSR.

Cllr David Rogers, Chairman of the Local Government Association's Community Wellbeing Board, accused the Government of underfunding local authorities, leaving the social care system "not fit for purpose". The Labour Party claims there is a "postcode lottery" in the amount people pay for social care, with huge disparities across the country.

Brian Basham – "as regulation in the UK and the US has loosened its restraints, the monsters have proliferated."

Excellent article by Jayati Ghosh about how increased/maintained spending on quality public services financed by progressive taxation/development aid is needed to prevent yet another surge in global unemployment.

Kevin Watkins, senior research fellow at the Brookings Institution, writes in Guardian Development about how we can pay for the Millennium Development Goal on children's education. "How about using proceeds from a global financial transaction tax to pay for an initiative that could bring hope to millions of the world's most disadvantaged children? Now that would be innovative financing."

Paul Krugman has a note for British readers: "every time Cameron takes credit for low British rates, he’s hoping you don’t know that the same thing has been happening in every non-euro advanced country."

Research by the Resoliution Foundation shows theTax Credit cuts will far outweigh the impact of the income tax cuts. On average, basic rate tax payers will be £41 a year better off but low-to-middle income families with children will be much worse off.