Brown’s “record employment”

Gordon Brown frequently asserts Britain has record employment or that Labour has “the best employment record in history” (Hansard, 16 Jan 08). In fact this honour goes to Nigel Lawson whose achievements Brown has never been able to come close to. Brown has specialised in finding alternatives to work – welfare, studenthood, etc. But here is the graph for economic activity percentage rates – ie, the proportion of people in work. It’s a strange graph because, aside from the industrial realignment of early Thatcher years, it basically oscillates between 78% and 80%.

Sadly, this is not adjusted for immigration – which accounts for 82% of new jobs since 1997 according to the Statistics Commission (pdf). So how can Brown claim that he has record employment? By that old canard of population growth. The Lawson peak of 80.7% in jobs involved 28.1 million workers. At the last count (Dec07) Brown had 79.1%