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
Population growth is irrelevant.
It just shows that the number of people being employed has gone up.
You have said there are no jobs. No jobs means there will be no increase in employment.
I bet you are a climate scientist. Hence your constant need to say there’s no evidence when its in front of you.
Look at your graph. It shows the increase in employment.
Notice something about the blue line? It’s always above zero. There never has been a period where there hasn’t been more jobs.
F minus. Must try harder.
LB
You’re deluded.
That ‘debt’ is just the borrowing.
What about the pensions that the state owes?
For example, if you’re a civil servant, does the state admit to owing you a pension? Nope. Not on the books. Be very worried. If its not on the books its contigent and its then optional to pay.
http://www.if.org.uk/archives/2031/ons-reveals-full-uk-pension-liabilities
The results showed the extraordinary sums that Britain has committed to pay its future retirees. In total, the UK is committed to paying £7.1 trillion in pensions to people who are currently either already retired or still in the workforce.
Another 7,100 bn off the books.
Then there is PFI. That’s off the books too.
Then nuclear decommissioning. Paid for up front, another missing liability or debt.
Then you have the guarantees. Off the books. For example, 100 million for the BT pension funds, Rail guarantees, ….
You are sadly deluded if you think the only debt is borrowing.
It’s by design. Publish the real debts, and apply accounting standards, and its dire.
Why do you think the state qualifies the accounts and says we wont’ admit to the pension debts?
Felix Lanzalaco
F minus lol.. you are the one who posted a graph trying to propose that employment has not gone down, when in actual fact all the increased employment on that graph since the recession was a projection. Read it again. The graph was posted in november 2010 at the point employment dips.Any increase beyond the dip is a “projected increase” lol.
When populations grow employment grows when not in a recession, because much employment is people employing each other in small businesses. Thats why the private sector growth was exponential. The public sector is a linear oscillation because the infrastructure is steady in the UK and any public sector growth will be spotted as an investment trend and capitalized upon by the private sector.
Felix Lanzalaco
OK, so make your point. You were trying to say its all borrowing. Then provide the breakdown of figures for what is specifically bad policy. i.e. the fraction of the 9 trillion. Going by the fact you cant understand simple graphs you are endorsing then i dont see you being able to understand either a breakdown of economic debt, never mind the underlying reason for each figure. i.e. That the underwriting basis for the borrowing was sold to many governments (lied to more like) as a solid and sustainable package based on various schemes the banks dreamed up. In reality the financial system underwriting that package was a house of cards ready to fall and that is why the recession is a global phenomena. We had this big speech by McVey at the foodbank debate on how its all labours fault when in reality almost all governments whether right or left wing around the world were duped into these schemes. SO the point is the borrowing that occured was not a result of left wing values. It was a global scam that all governments were duped into.
LB
You’re being a plonker.
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lms/labour-market-statistics/january-2014/sty-employment.html
Comparing September-November 2013 with a year earlier, there were 450,000 more people in employment, 172,000 fewer unemployed people and 75,000 fewer people aged from 16 to 64 not in the labour force.
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450,000 new jobs and according to you, there aren’t any.
Notice that the public sector isn’t providing any jobs, and yet the private sector is.
Notice too, that unemployment down, Lots more jobs, and no baby boom coming into the employment market, that most of that difference between reductions in unemployment and the extra jobs are going to migrants.