Rethinking Unemployment and the Work Ethic

Beyond the 'Quasi-Titmuss' Paradigm

A. Dunn

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781137032102
• eBook ISBN: 9781137032119
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Labour Economics
• Index: Social Sciences

While recent Labour and coalition governments have insisted that many unemployed people prefer state benefits to a job, and have tightened the rules attached to claiming unemployment benefits, mainstream academic research repeatedly concludes that only a tiny minority of unemployed benefit claimants are not strongly committed to employment. Andrew Dunn argues that the discrepancy can be explained by UK social policy academia leaving important questions unanswered. Dunn presents findings from four empirical studies which, in contrast to earlier research, focused on unemployed people's attitudes towards unattractive jobs and included interviews with people in welfare-to-work organisations. All four studies' findings were consistent with the view that many unemployed benefit claimants prefer living on benefits to undertaking jobs which would increase their income, but which they find unattractive. Thus, the studies gave support to politicians' view about the need to tighten benefit rules.

1

Introduction

1.1 Defining voluntary unemployment

This book is about voluntary unemployment, which is widely understood to mean being unemployed through choice. But who do we categorise as unemployed, and how do we decide whether or not they are unemployed through choice? I will answer these two questions in turn. We might say someone is ‘unemployed’ if they do not have a job, but jobless 10- and 90-year-olds are rarely described in this way. Usually the term ‘unemployed’ is applied to jobless non-retired adults who are either looking for a job or expected by the state to look for one. The International Labour Organization (or ILO) measure/definition of unemployment reflects individuals’ employment aspirations, as it includes all who are outside employment, want to be employed and have looked for a job in recent weeks (see Hussmanns, 2007, p. 13). The only other widely used definition/measure, the ‘claimant count’, is more about who the state expects to seek employment, as it includes all who are in receipt of state unemployment benefits (this was ‘Jobseeker’s Allowance’ [or JSA] in the UK in 2011, when most of the research presented in this book was carried out – although ‘Universal Credit’ is now being phased in as a replacement to JSA and some other benefits).

Regarding the second question, deciding what ‘unemployed through choice’ means (and hence, what ‘voluntary unemployment’ means) is, in fact, rather difficult. Of course, someone who, having been made redundant through no fault of their own a year ago, has since made hundreds of applications for suitable and attainable Minimum Wage jobs is unquestionably not voluntarily unemployed, whereas someone who was dismissed for misconduct from their last job and has subsequently made no attempt to find employment unquestionably is (unless there are few or no jobs available to apply for). But in between these extreme cases it is much harder to decide. For example, is someone voluntarily unemployed if they refused an otherwise suitable job because it was 15 miles from their home? And should we call a former bank manager voluntarily unemployed if, after two years of unsuccessful applications for banking jobs, she or he does not start considering other occupations? What if someone walked out of a job two months ago and has diligently looked for suitable Minimum Wage jobs ever since – are they voluntarily unemployed? One person’s answer to these questions might well differ from another’s.

But how do I define ‘unemployment’ and ‘voluntary unemployment’? In fact, I am open minded on both these questions, but I will now briefly explain why, for the purposes of this book, I use the ‘claimant count’ wherever possible, and why I always avoid defining voluntary unemployment. I use the ‘claimant count’ because my central research question is ‘do people who meet the following criteria (they are jobless, non-retired adults, capable of undertaking at least some jobs, available for employment, rely on state benefits for the bulk of their income, and are expected by the state to seek employment as a condition of receiving these benefits) really want and seek employment?’ People who received JSA in 2011 were highly likely to meet all of these criteria. If I had chosen to use a broader definition/measure of unemployment than the ‘claimant count’ it would have inevitably included significant numbers who did not meet all of my criteria which would, in turn, risk my discussion focusing too much on debates and controversies other than my chosen one. Notable examples of these other debates and controversies include whether or not jobless lone parent benefit claimants with young children should have to look for jobs, what the retirement age should be, whether or not people who do not claim state unemployment benefits should have to contribute to society through work, and whether or not significant numbers of disability benefit claimants are fit for employment.

I avoid defining voluntary unemployment because, as I have already suggested, I think it is largely a matter of opinion. In fact, a key theme of the book is that one’s opinion about whether or not somebody is voluntarily unemployed is likely to reflect, to some extent, one’s political beliefs. As Mead (1988) noted, those on the political right tend to believe, for example, that long-term unemployed people who turn down jobs because they consider them inadequately paid have caused themselves to remain unemployed, whereas those on the left are more likely to argue that unemployed people are entitled to exercise such choice. While this book is mainly concerned with facts related to the debate about voluntary unemployment, it constantly recognises that the issue is heavily clouded in politics. In the book I look in detail at people’s attitudes towards being unemployed and towards various jobs, and at their actual labour market choices. Whether or not those attitudes and choices are acceptable is for readers to decide.

In continuing to introduce the book, Section 1.2 contrasts the views of recent governments with those of mainstream social policy academics about the employment commitment of UK unemployed benefit claimants. While governments’ policies and rhetoric indicate that they believe there is a significant lack of commitment to employment, this view has been repeatedly contradicted by the research-based conclusions of mainstream social policy academics. Section 1.3 then summarises the book’s arguments. Its main one is that the gap between the views of mainstream politicians and mainstream social policy academics about unemployed claimants’ commitment to employment can be explained by social policy academia drawing its firm conclusions without properly responding to some important conservative arguments. Section 1.4 then broadens the discussion by introducing arguments, from various political perspectives, about what citizens should have to contribute to society through work. Finally, Section 1.5 describes the structure of the book and introduces each chapter’s main purpose and content (though please refer to Section 7.2 for summaries of each of the chapters’ main findings and conclusions).

1.2 Voluntary unemployment and welfare policy: recent UK governments versus mainstream UK social policy academics

I start by describing UK government policies that are most relevant to debates about voluntary unemployment. Recent UK governments have increasingly sought to ‘activate’ unemployed benefit claimants (that is, promote their labour market participation). Since 1979, more and more behavioural conditions have been attached to claiming unemployment benefits (Novak, 1997; Dwyer, 2004), and there is now a consensus among major UK political parties that benefits should no longer be paid to employable people of working age who refuse work or training, and that governments must ensure that jobs pay more than out-of-work benefits (Deacon and Patrick, 2011). The Coalition’s Work Programme (WP), like its predecessor Labour’s Flexible New Deal, gives voluntary and private sector organisations contracts to help long-term claimants of various out-of-work benefits to enter employment. The only important differences are that in the WP, payments to organisations are results-based (including more generous payments for mobilising ‘harder-to-help’ claimants into employment) and that organisations have greater control than previously in deciding which work activities individual claimants must undertake (DWP, 2010a). Long-term unemployed benefit claimants must participate in the WP or face the harshest benefit sanctions in the history of the British welfare state (Wright, 2012). Claimants who fail to take part in ‘mandatory work activity’ when directed to, fail to apply for a job, or reject a reasonable job offer will suffer a loss of benefit for three months in the first instance, and for three years if it happens three times (see DWP, 2010b, p. 30). Alongside the WP, Universal Credit aims to go beyond Labour’s aspiration to ‘make work pay’ and ‘ensure that work always pays and is seen to pay’ by guaranteeing that all transitions from welfare benefits to employment result in a net income gain (Duncan Smith, 2010, p. 1). This net income gain looks set to be achieved largely through smaller increases in benefit rates rather than by boosting in-work incomes, as the Coalition has continued the long-term trend of making unemployment benefits worth an ever-decreasing percentage of national average income (Wright, 2012).

These policy trends – of more and more conditions being attached to less-than-generous unemployment benefits, with tougher and tougher sanctions for those who do not comply – are underpinned by an assumption that there is a lack of employment commitment among unemployed benefit claimants. Indeed, both Labour and Coalition ministers have insisted that there is a culture of work shyness or welfare dependency among the unemployed claimants, and that many of them could do more to increase their chances of finding a job. When he was Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Labour’s John Hutton (2006) asserted that a ‘can work, won’t work culture’ had developed, and pointed to hundreds of thousands of unfilled vacancies for unskilled jobs which were often more numerous in parts of the UK with below-average employment rates. After noting that ‘workers from Poland’ had found jobs here, he asked ‘why can’t our own people do so as well?’ Similarly, Coalition Work and Pensions Minister Iain Duncan Smith (2010, p. 1) claimed that over recent decades ‘welfare dependency took root in communities up and down the country, breeding hopelessness and intergenerational poverty’. Despite a recession which saw the number of JSA claimants increase from around 0.8 million at the end of 2007 to around 1.5 million by 2009 (where it remained for the next three years), Duncan Smith stressed that unemployed people need to ‘recognise the jobs don’t come to you’, and referred to a television documentary in which unemployed people in Merthyr Tydfil had become ‘static’ and reluctant to get ‘on a bus’ to Cardiff to search for work where jobs were more plentiful (BBC Newsnight, 20 November 2010).

Yet these mainstream politicians’ views contrast sharply with the conclusions of academic research, which has mainly been conducted by social policy academics. Despite a considerable amount of empirical literature, no ‘culture’ of welfare dependency or work shyness has ever been found; Walker’s (2000, p. 97) review of this literature concluded that ‘the evidence is clear that very few unemployed claimants prefer welfare benefits to a job’, and this remains true (Wright, 2013a, 2013b). The evidence referred to includes studies of unemployed claimants’ attitudes towards employment (for example, Gallie and Vogler, 1994), their views on attaching conditions to receiving benefits (for example, Dwyer, 2000), their reported job search behaviour – including whether or not they are willing to apply for poorly paid or unpleasant jobs (for example, McKay et al., 1997) and their values and cultural traits (for example, Shildrick et al., 2012a). The following extract is taken from a typical and accurate summary of the literature’s main conclusions (Surender et al., 2010, p. 205–6):

Dean and Taylor-Gooby’s (1992) UK study found no evidence of an alternative ‘work shy’ culture among welfare users, but rather that the long-term unemployed shared the same work orientation of the mass of the population, while Gallie and Paugam’s (2000) comparative study of EU countries found that the unemployed in each of the 15 European states attached greater importance to having a job than those who were actually in paid work. The level of benefit was of little relevance; in fact, those countries which had the most generous welfare arrangements were among those where the unemployed demonstrated the highest level of employment attachment.

Given the weight of evidence, mainstream social policy academics have insisted that mainstream politicians like Hutton and Duncan Smith are misguided. Sharon Wright (2013a), for example, has stated that

Policies have been designed over the last 20 years on the assumption that individuals are responsible for their own unemployment and poverty ... politicians’ assumptions about the causes of unemployment are not accurate ... evidence shows overwhelmingly that people who don’t have a job are looking for work and want to get a job.

When rejecting politicians’ view that attaching more and more conditions to the receipt of less-than-generous benefits is necessary, these authors have instead recommended more job creation combined with greater measures to tackle in-work poverty (for example, Shildrick et al., 2012b). However, as the next section explains, in this book I take a fresh, critical look at existing evidence about the employment commitment of unemployed benefit claimants, develop my own research agenda and then present my own research findings.

1.3 The book’s main arguments

In this book I argue that UK social policy academics’ confident conclusions about the employment commitment of unemployed benefit claimants have been drawn despite important questions remaining unanswered, and that this can explain the gap reported in Section 1.2 between their conclusions and those of mainstream politicians. As Deacon (2002) has noted, UK social policy has been dominated by the left-wing ‘quasi-Titmuss’ school, which has strongly emphasised the structural causes of poverty and unemployment and shown hostility towards those who mention the role played by individuals’ attitudes and behaviour. In this climate, research findings about unemployed claimants which might otherwise be considered surprising or counterintuitive (such as the one about employed people showing less employment commitment than unemployed people in all 15 countries studied, see Section 1.2) are typically presented by mainstream social policy authors without any further explanation or critical discussion. More importantly, as I discuss in the paragraphs below, mainstream social policy authors have routinely failed to respond to some important arguments that are made mainly by conservatives. In this book I do critically examine the counterintuitive findings, before presenting findings from four of my own empirical research projects which were designed with the neglected conservative arguments in mind. These projects delivered findings which indicate that the scope for unemployed benefit claimants to increase their net income via entering employment is far greater than is routinely implied or concluded by mainstream social policy academics. Furthermore, in contrast to mainstream social policy accounts, the research presented here exposed dramatic differences between individuals – both in their attitudes (towards being an unemployed benefit claimant and towards various forms of employment) and in the actual labour market choices they reported. I conclude that the arguments and evidence presented in this book cast doubt on the view, popular among mainstream social policy academics (though not among mainstream UK politicians), that unemployed people’s employment commitment is so strong that there is no need to attach job search conditions to the receipt of their benefits.

In the rest of this section I explain how two arguments made mainly by leading conservative commentators, notably David Marsland (1996) in the UK, and Larry Mead (2004) and Charles Murray (1984) in the US, influenced the design of my research, and, in doing so, I introduce more of the book’s key features. The first argument is that some people avoid the worst category of jobs if social security systems allow them to and if benefit rates are set at tolerable levels. In view of this argument, the research projects presented in Chapters 4, 5 and 6 focused on people’s attitudes towards (and their reported actual choices between) unattractive jobs and living on unemployment benefits. Therefore ‘choosiness’ in job search behaviour (which I define as being selective in the jobs one is willing to apply for in order to avoid reliance on benefits for the bulk of one’s income) is a key concept in this book.

This talk of unattractive jobs begs the question ‘what is an unattractive job?’ Well, for my purposes I define it as whatever legal jobs in the present-day UK labour market a particular individual considers unattractive. Nevertheless, I also recognise throughout, that research has consistently found that not only badly paid jobs, but also those offering little or no opportunity for autonomy and skill use are generally felt to be the least attractive kind (see, for example, Lewis et al.’s 1995 literature review). A further point of clarification is that, while I investigate people’s attitudes to unattractive jobs, I do not focus on attitudes towards jobs that are either unusually awful or wholly unsuitable for particular individuals, as very few commentators (not even the aforementioned conservatives) are likely to insist that unemployed claimants apply for these jobs.

Having established that my research is focused on choices between (and attitudes towards) unattractive jobs and claimant unemployment, I now explain how this focus led me to take more of an interest in social diversity, both beyond the unemployed benefit claimant category and within it. If I was only researching ‘are people willing to do a job of some kind?’ this would exclude the entire employed population from discussion – as, obviously, all of them are. But focusing on choosiness and job quality exposes the possibility that employed people might be just as reluctant as unemployed people to undertake some jobs (possibly even more so). Indeed, I start from the assumption that all individuals, whether currently unemployed or not, have their own complex, changeable and unique sets of attitudes towards all kinds of jobs and towards being unemployed. Furthermore, given that attitudes, preferences, values, habits, cultural traits and so on, and actual behaviour in all spheres of life usually vary cons...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Introduction
• 2  The Academic Debate About Unemployment and Employment Commitment
• 3  Researching Employment Commitment
• 4  The Interviews with Employed and Unemployed People
• 5  Who Agrees that Having Almost Any Job Is Better Than Being Unemployed?
• 6  What Do People Who Help Long-term JSA Claimants into Employment Say About Their Clients Attitudes to Work and Job Search Behaviour?
• 7  Summary and Conclusion
• Notes
• References
• Index