Over the quarter ended July, net job gains was 236,000. Private sector creating jobs galore. Nearly 30 million employed - only 11,000 below an all time high. (Per ONS).

Take a look at regional differences, available income, part-time employment, youth unemployment and the growth figures.

It aint working for the NHS!

The recent growth figures seemed to suggest we're still in recession, so in answer to the question, no, not yet.

IIRC, the recent growth has still not seen us back at the levels of July 2011.

But food banks are on the rise, so obviously it's good times for some.

He and his statisticians will also have an eye on the last quarter figures of the year - every Olympic host city in modern times has reported a slump in sales and confidence in the quarter after hosting the games, some still argue that its where Greece's problems started...

And we already know that retail was hit.

Apart from John Lewis, which has done wonderfully - up 60%. It's common -ownership really does show us the way. As The Guardian points out today cleaners and caterers were outsoruced 30 years ago. Current members don't want to let back them in as members / partners because they would dilute their own big bonuses, because current members don't think they "deserve" a share of the profits, etc. So, the "workers" are just as self-interested and selfish as the traditional bosses. Well, there's a surprise. I think I'll boycott Waitrose until they start paying their cleaners properly rather than reducing their hours and paying them £6.08 / hour.

[url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19597352Construction down.[/url

Every sector can’t have gone down as the workforce has increased

I wonder how much of that increase is down to seasonal work, e.g. agriculture and tourism?

Thats a stat that couldn't be answered by a so-called "expert" on the radio last night, was is clear is that a lot of job creation in the private sector (there is virtually nil in the public sector) is of short term contracts, temporary contracts or agency work, the company I work for has all of the large staff agencies in the country as customers and we have never been busier than we are now.

It may be a sign of the times and it doesn't always help the individual or the country as a whole when temporary contracts are the permanent state of affairs in large businesses, it certainly won't help the financial services sector.

102,000 of the net increase represents permament, full-time jobs.

Is it bearing fruit ? No.

I was talking with some people last week for a piece, and there is apparently a vast increase in zero-hours contracts, short-term contracts (as you mention) and assorted other insecure forms of employment.

This was particularly in the context of young workers – and it was pointed out that such things make it pretty much impossible for people to be able to get housing, for instance.

It's not remotely long-term thinking.

Talking of which, did we mention, earlier this week, that the government's latest plans for boosting the economy, including a bank for small businesses, effectively admits that QE has simply given more money to the banks for no return?

I am sure I heard on the BBC that one of the reasons for the unemployment statistics falling was due to a huge number of part time and short term positions created by the Olympics.

Whatever, there is huge anomaly in that the economy is in recession when the unemployment figures are going down. The only explanation I can think of is the new jobs are mostly low paid and not very productive. Otherwise we would see the economy befitting from increased spending power of the larger working population and output increasing.

It is as if we have more people doing work that is far less productive than in the past so not earning enough to boost the retail side of the economy either.

If that is the result of "plan A" we still need a "plan B".

I can't help but wonder if the increase in employed people is in anyway related to the reported increases in part time workers. I know of two local firms that have taken a lot of their employees off full time contracts and put them onto part time ones, making up the hours by employing others.
I don't see where the benefits of this are (Hopefully someone else may know), but I can see what it does to the figures.

Lies, damn lies, etc.

Except hasn't employment been rising continuously for months now? Seem to remember the BBC saying that ...

Put it down to the idiotic Labour government. They increased and increased employers NI, which is now at a ridiculously high 13.8% of earnings over £144 per week. So, as Miss Dally was informed by Tesco today they employ no one (at the branch she is applying to) for more than 20 hours. Now let's see why. 20 hours at £7 / hour (the offered rate) = £140 = no NI. This is the problem with market distortion arising from stepped taxation banding.

That's why when cleaners, etc get a small pay rise they tend to get their hours cut. As usual, most of the country's ills derive from incompetent politicians and their poor legislation.

Labour raised employers NI from 10% to 12.8% over 13 years and during growth. The coalition have raised it to 13.8% during a recessionary period.
It also means very little, if employers NI were abolished then that tax revenue would have to be found elsewhere. The fairest way of doing that is through income tax, so employers would have to pay their employees more to account for the higher income tax. Whether they pay it to the taxman in employers NI or the employee and its then taken in income tax is irrelevant.

Wasn't the 1% rise set out pre-election? It's clearly not irrelevant to the companies concerned, otherwise they'd not do it. It's clearly not irrelevant to the topic under discussion - the growth in part-time employment. So, I'd say it pretty much hit's the nail on the head.

Tesco emply 472,000 people. for simplicity lets assume all work c. 20 hours at c. £7 per hour. Tesco pays no ers NI. If instead it employed 236,000 at c. 40 hours per week, they'd be paying over 236 Million in NI each year. That's one heck of alot of cash. Actually the saving will be less as they get corporation tax relief on the NI, but you'll still be talking best part of £200 M per year. Now multiply those figures by all the other shop workers, cleaners, caterers, etc and who see what is driving part-time working for millions of people. it's government policy. Government benefit as they point to how many jobs have been created or there are in the economy.

The so called economic "puzzle" of having more people in work but a GDP that stays resolutely shrunken could be due to many factors.

Pick and mix from the following ...

a) Short term work e.g. Olympics.
b) Lack of confidence, i.e. Having listened to Gideon's doom and gloom comparing us with Greece, people could be sitting on what cash they do have and not spending it, especially when they know he's going to be cutting more in the future.
c) The trend in salaries is almost flat and, if you strip out the lucrative top end, the bottom end is going down (and it's the middle and bottom end whose cash keeps GDP turning over).
d) Privatisation shifts jobs from public to private without any change in GDP but (deceptively) looks like the private sector providing more growth than it is.
e) What are all these supposedly new jobs? If they are all very low paid they will hardly raise GDP by much. Indeed, if new jobs are less well-paid than the existing jobs, they will have a negative effect on GDP.
f) The ONS has been over-stating the recession for years.
g) Much of market economic theory depends on numbers not mood and the mood isn't good.

The big one, which ain't going to go away is competion from the Far East, etc. 9 times as many people are going through industrialisation compared with the West's industrialisation. For along time a small proportion of us have had all the wealth. That's changing fast. As I said on here the other day - we'll need to get used to working longer for less. In Singapore and Hong Kong (were people are on average better off than us after cost of living is adjusted for) they work much longer hours than us - the equivalent of 5 of our working months extra each year! As yo hard work, people in HK live on average a couple of years longer than us. That is the future. You may not like it, may think it's "not fair", but that's the future and we all need to get used to it. Our big hope is that because of difficulties in getting jobs record numbers of youngsters are setting up their own businesses. Whilst most will fail or barely scrape a living some will no doubt become the economic powerhouses of the future.

Well in victorian times people worked longer hours, and in sweatshops they work longer hours too, and they have crap standards of living

and built the accumulated wealth and infrastructure we're still living off.