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
because most of the migrants came straight here for work.
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Notice the contradiction.
1. There are no jobs
2. Migrants are working.
2 directly contradicts 1.
That’s more evidence that your statement that there are no jobs is false.
LB
No its not. It’s bad thinking for you. Having to confront the issue for specific cases just shows how lacking you are when it comes to fixing the mess. Not that it can be fixed because the welfare state has that 7.1 trillion debt it can’t pay.
So Mr 50p and his job offers – not a myth
Fungi unable to work – not a myth. He’s now unemployable.
Romanians on the street. Why do we need to pay them welfare? We need to help them back to Romania and we need to go after the trafickers.
Polish couple on drugs committing benefit fraud. Deport them.
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well so what are you denying that the global recession is not a result of the shenanigans in the banking system ?
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The root cause was that people borrowed cash, and didn’t pay it back. That’s a combination of stupid bankers for lending the poor money they couldn’t repay, and politicians insisting they do so.
The banking mess has resulted in a profit to the state of 35 bn on the loans, and all those taxes.
Why are you denying the state has a 9 trillion debt that it can’t pay?
Felix Lanzalaco
thats a false graph, it was constructed mid november 2010 and extrapolated for theory.
http://www.mtheory.co.uk/wordpress/burly/archives/105
Mostly it accounts for population growth (i.e. the original ONS stats). Seeing as you posted that knowing it context. i.e. the real graph below… I would say you are trying to deceive. Or maybe somebody just provided you with that link of the graph with no context. If its the former i dont debate with liars. If its the latter, then clearly you dont do much research on your information
Felix Lanzalaco
I never said there were no jobs. Show where i said that. I said there were not enough
Nev Hardwick
There are several discussions on here and I may have something to offer. I have been unemployed and I have signed on. I have noticed big changes. Signed on in 2004 and it coincided with quite a severe breakdown. The guy at the centre was an absolute gem. I had all my paperwork with me and noticed that I was carrying a sick certificate (it was in my pack because I did not know to submit it). He used that because I got more money being unemployed sick than unemployed. Even so, the money was nowhere near enough to pay my mortgage and other expenses. Apparently this was because my wife worked!
Next time, 2006, I arrive at the centre as a new claimant and I have left a couple of questions unanswered on my claim. Different person who says that he has not got time to help, the form should have been completed and my claim will be delayed and do not come back unless all the forms are complete. Quite honestly it was one of the most unpleasant exchanges with another person it has ever been my misfortune to be part of. In the first instance I was without work for six weeks. In the second it was two weeks. Signing on is one of the most demeaning things I have ever had to do (and I have had some really rubbish jobs).
The money no-where near covered my living expenses but I was under the impression that was why I pay tax and NI.
There is also some discussion with a user LB. LB, you quote numbers of job adverts, vacancies, as indication that there need be no unemployment. There are still in the order of 2.5 million unemployed and up to a million on part-time, short-time or zero hours contracts looking for other work. The most expansive opinions are that there are possibly 850,000 vacancies at any given time. There will always be churn (people moving job to job) but there is nowhere near enough jobs to go around. I have experience of job hunting in IT and Engineering. There is well documented evidence in both of advertising non-existing jobs by agencies. They do this for a variety of reasons but if you subscribe to agencies or internet search you will find the same jobs advertised by three or four different agencies. The actual job may or may not exist but what is does not mean is that there are three or four jobs. There maybe just one or possibly none.
I have former colleagues in both fields who have taken jobs at far lower rates of pay than they are used to just to have an income and this will be after months of unemployment. These people are qualified, experienced and with good work records; the work is just not there.
When this program was discussed on the Today program, the producer/director was asked where the 90% outof work figure came from. Apparently it was a quote from one of the residents. If true it would seem that a quote with no evidence whatsoever is being used to headline for shock value. This has not been made clear in the program.
One last point. One hell of a lot of welfare is paid to people in work. My simplistic view is that if work paid a decent, living wage, then the welfare paid to them would be unnecessary. As a taxpayer I resent paying to subsidise companies low wages. I also resent paying more tax than I need because he government has completely failed in its duty to get multinationals to pay appropriate tax. In fact it has worked impressively hard in order to make it easier to register a company abroad and evade even more tax than previously.