Opinion & Commentary
Tough love for the jobless
Human services Minister, Joe Hockey, thinks a majority of unemployed people receiving Newstart Allowance are avoiding taking available jobs. He has therefore announced tighter monitoring of the job search activities of unemployed people to deter ‘job snobs’ and motivate malingerers.
Hockey’s comments will provoke unease in some quarters, for many of us feel queasy when we hear the unemployed being criticised. We know that life on benefits is no picnic, and we are rightly wary about ‘blaming the victim’ – accusing jobless people of being workshy when in reality there are no jobs for them to do.
But this concern for the plight of people less fortunate than ourselves should not blind us to looking at facts. If it really is true that there are significant numbers of people on benefits who could and should be working, then the Minister is quite right to bring it to public attention and to try to fix the problem. Many workers on modest incomes pay high rates of tax to finance the benefits system, and politicians owe a duty to them to ensure their cash is not being wasted or defrauded.
So what is the evidence?
More than half of the people who sign up for unemployment benefits get another job within eight weeks. Clearly, these are motivated people. If there is a problem, it lies not with them, but with those who have been on benefits for an extended period.
Hockey points to the anomaly of labour shortages coexisting with stubbornly high rates of long-term unemployment. Over one hundred thousand people have been out of work and supposedly looking for a job for more than twelve months, yet employers are crying out for workers, and according to Hockey, more than half of all notified job vacancies are low-skill positions which almost anybody on Newstart could fill.
This is strong, though circumstantial, evidence in support of his view that many long-term unemployed people are failing to seize the opportunities available to them. Even stronger, and more direct, evidence in support of this contention is available from surveys.
One of the most telling pieces of evidence is based on research commissioned in 2002 for the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations. Involving 3,500 interviews with jobseekers, it found that 29% had no desire to work or claimed to be incapable of working; another 28% were ‘drifting’ or had given up looking for work; and a further 19% were only willing to accept jobs they found attractive. These figures provide strong backing for Hockey’s claims.
Moreover, even when people are serious about looking for work, they often stipulate conditions that prevent them from taking up available jobs. The Australian Bureau of Statistics found that, although most unemployed people recognize there are jobs available for them to do, two-thirds are unwilling to move within their own state or territory to take a suitable job. Economists have also found that many unemployed people are unwilling to accept jobs paying less than their previous position. On average, even after one year on the dole, jobseekers still expect a wage worth over 90% of their last pay packet.
But the key research arguably lies not in economics but in psychology. While Hockey is probably right to suggest that some long-term unemployed people are deliberately avoiding work, and that others are being too picky about the jobs they are willing to do, the biggest problem is that people who have been out of work for a long time become demotivated and lose confidence in themselves. Skills erode, and what psychologists call ‘time-work discipline’ – the routines of getting up in the morning, making yourself presentable, keeping appointments – frays alarmingly quickly.
The result is that, even when opportunities present themselves, they slip by. There is always a reason why this job vacancy is unsuitable or that one is too demanding. This is not a problem of laziness – it is a matter of confidence. As American analyst Lawrence Mead puts it, the long-term jobless become “dutiful but defeated.”
There is only one way to reverse this downward psychological spiral once it starts, and that is to get a job and rebuild your confidence. That is why Hockey is right to demand that Centrelink tighten up its monitoring of claimants’ jobsearch diaries and start nagging them to go after the opportunities that are out there.
In the end, it does the unemployed no favours to turn a blind eye to their continued inactivity. All of us need to have demands made of us; none of us thrives when little or nothing is expected of us. As Mead suggests, when people settle into a despondent habit of inactivity, they need “hassle” as well as “help” if they are ever to get going again.
This is what Hockey seems to be proposing. His intervention should be welcomed by anyone who understands how long-term idleness drains the human spirit.
Professor Peter Saunders is Social Research Director of The Centre for Independent Studies and author of Australia’s Welfare Habit, and How to Kick It.
