Despite yesterday’s gloomy unemployment figures there is, it turns out, good news for the
government buried in current labour patterns: the total number of hours worked in the last three months has risen by three million. The bad news is that employers are currently filling this demand
by getting current employees to work longer hours (average weekly hours over this time period rose by 0.3 to 31.5), rather than taking on new workers. Presumably this is because it is so much
cheaper, and less risky, to do so.
This should come as an encouragement to the government, as they search for ways to bring about growth. Scrapping or regionalising the minimum wage; exempting small businesses from various
regulations; making it easier to dismiss people; and streamlining maternity provisions — all have been proposed as ways of reducing both costs and the risks to businesses of employing people.
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