The ever interesting ONS Monthly Economic Review was released yesterday, and alongside some detail on why productivity remains low (job creation in the low-productivity finance, utilities and oil sectors), there’s a chart detailing the change in employment, since the recession started in Q1 2008.
What the chart shows is that employment levels are 613,000 higher than when the recession started. But all this gain has come from increases in part-time workers and the self-employed. Full-time employment is currently 148,000 lower than when the recession started.
It also shows that, since Q1 2010 (ie when the coalition took over), employment levels have risen by roughly 1.3mn.
Roughly 55% of this has been full-time jobs. Very good news.
But just under 45% has been in self-employment and part-time work.
ONS suggest that:
…self-employment grew relatively strongly during the economic downturn, coinciding with the period during which older workers made a greater contribution to the employment rate…”
So when older workers lost their job during the recession, they were more likely to become self-employed than find full-time work again.
Whether this is economically good or not depends on productivity, wages and a variety of other factors, and ONS has suggested it will present new data on this very soon!
