52 per cent of the people in the areas where Benefits Street was filmed are in employment.
There are two pervasive myths about welfare in the UK which are routinely retailed by politicians and the media.
The first is the myth of the family where ‘nobody has worked for generations’. The second is the myth of the area where ‘nobody works around here’.
By ‘myths’ I don’t just mean widely believed falsehoods, but statements which embody a mythological mode of thinking which has no relation to facts whatsoever.
The point about these myths is that they refer to things taking place elsewhere involving other people. It is the sense of otherness they convey rather than the factual inaccuracies they involve, which tells us we’re dealing with myths.
So to James Turner Street, the supposed subject of Channel 4’s documentary series Benefits Street, which seems to have given the struggling Iain Duncan Smith a new lease of political life. Press coverage of the series has repeatedly claimed that the great majority of residents on the street are receiving out of work benefits.
For example:
The Express: Benefits Street exposed: The street where 9 out of 10 households are on welfare
The Mail, (this Tuesday): The series … follows the lives of people on James Turner Street – where 90 per cent of residents are on benefits
Today the Mail has toned down its claim: it seems only 75 per cent ‘are said to be on benefits’, which may indicate a tentative recognition on the Mail’s part that its previous claims don’t stand up to scrutiny.
What are the real employment figures for ‘Benefits Street’?
I’ve matched the postcodes for James Turner Street to Census Output Areas, the finest grained geography at which official statistics are normally published, using ONS’s postcode/output area lookup file. These are very small areas indeed, with about 175 households in total. James Turner Street straddles two of these areas. Data on employment and economic activity is available from the 2011 Census via Nomis.
If we want to know what employment looks like on James Turner Street, this is where to start.
In these output areas, 43 per cent and 38 per cent of people aged 16-74 were in employment on Census day 2011. However this includes pensioners and students in the denominator. Focussing just on the non-retired, non-student population, 52 per cent in both areas were in employment. About a third were ‘other inactive’, meaning they were neither working nor seeking work, and 16/15 per cent were unemployed.
If the production company for Benefits Street managed to find an area within these output areas where 90 per cent or 75 per cent of adults were out of work, they would have to have been very selective indeed.
It’s also useful to look at the household level, as many non-working people are living in households where someone else is working, and most benefits are awarded on the basis of household income. Focussing on non-retired and non-student households, 62 per cent and 65 per cent of households had someone in employment.
These figures should not come as a surprise. The areas where ‘nobody works around here’, like the ‘families where nobody’s worked for generations’ belong to mythological thinking.
Moving up a geographical notch to the level of Census Super Output Areas (average 670 households), in only 0.16 per cent of areas are 50 per cent or more of working age non-student households without employment. The great majority of people who are out of work live in areas where the majority of people (other than pensioners or students) are in work. This is true even in very deprived areas, of which James Turner Street is an example.
There is more information on the James Turner Street area available at ONS’s Neighbourhood Statistics site (using the larger Super Output Area geography). This shows that out of work benefit receipt among people of working age is 30 per cent rather than the 90 per cent of myth.
On a range of deprivation indicators, this area is clearly struggling. But among the wealth of largely depressing statistics on the site is a detail we haven’t heard about in the frenzy of hand-wringing about Benefits Street. Educational achievement at GCSE level is well above the average for both England and Birmingham with 71 per cent achieving 5 or more A*- C passes compared to a national average of 59 per cent.
Perhaps that detail might encourage people to junk the mythological thinking surrounding this unfairly maligned area. When it comes to GCSE attainment, the James Turner Street area seems to be bucking the expectations of the media, the government and the general public. That should be something to celebrate.
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50 Responses to “James Turner Street exists: Benefits Street doesn’t”
LB
So its experts.
That’s the same experts who spent trillions and didn’t get any results. The same experts who have left a 7.1 trillion debt, which means no pensions.
There are jobs. What do you think the low skilled migrants are doing?
Or do you think the low skilled migrants are all claiming benefits?
There is no scape goating. Bar White Dee and Black Dee who are scum for their crimes, namely stealing from the vulnerable and for dealing drugs. That’s not scapegoating, that is going after the behaviour.
If you want to go after people who scape goat others, look at the standard attitude of the left, its the bankers – all of them, or its the rich – all of them.
ie Going after a group to scapegoat.
Now before you say, but I’m doing that with migrants. I’m being far more specific. I don’t care where migrants come from. There are two bits of behaviour that are needed.
1. Don’t commit crimes.
2. Pay more tax than the cost of you being here.
Objective, not subjective.
If you want any migrants who don’t meet these criteria, then you can sponsor them out of your own pocket.
Just as if you think the Dees deserve money, why don’t you pay them out of your pocket. That way, we can stop taxing working people who are on low wages.
LB
No jobs?
http://www.mtheory.co.uk/wordpress/burly/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/UK-employment-trends.png
Come on, explain the blue line. Increase in employment. Lots of jobs, whose getting them?
Felix Lanzalaco
analysis of the latest employment figures finds that it is far from reality. All the previous markers have been shifted to make a good sounding figure and we might actually have more unemployment now. Kind of like how benefits street fiddled its figures. Hard to believe its not been decimated in parliment. Well maybe it has.
Sure, but again immigration is another issue. It was never really about benefits, because most of the migrants came straight here for work.
Felix Lanzalaco
Picking single cases to construct arguments about benefits is very bad thinking. Nearly all the myths about fraud, fecklessness are just that ..myths. What about this very article you are replying to. So much for 90% claiming benefits. That this was just believed so widely and nobody even bothered to investigate at channel 4, says it all about the current times. So channel 4 is no better than a tabloid paper now.
well so what are you denying that the global recession is not a result of the shenanigans in the banking system ?
There is nothing wrong with those rules. If thats all the problem we had and its solutions were that would be nice. But its not. We are in an economic recession due to dysfunction in our international economic system. That is the reality, International economics is messed up, and there are not enough jobs. SO.. turning on minority and demonizing them, thats just a really base instinct you are entertaining. It will feel good in the sort term, but if you have any humanity you will be depressed you did this five years from now.
Felix Lanzalaco
demonizing the worst off isnt even effective anyway… SO it just makes you feel good, and its a non intelligent solution as it ignore the real problems. If the majority thinks like you, we are screwed and the educated will be migrating from the UK in droves making the situation worse. Maybe they already have. There is a suspicous lack of brainpower and ideas in UK politics.