At the ASI.
Do we really have “sectors” of the economy any more to which we can apply different minimum wages etc as Labour is suggesting?
At the ASI.
Do we really have “sectors” of the economy any more to which we can apply different minimum wages etc as Labour is suggesting?
Did we ever have “sectors” other than as an arbitrary and subjective personal classification?
A friend of mine works as a nurse at the local Hospice. Does she work for the third sector or the health sector?
My doctor is a director at our local surgery. Does she work for the private sector or the health sector?
It’s a good point. I get annoyed when people moan that “only 12% work in manufacturing, we don’t make anything in this country anymore”.
Factories depend on bought-in services, like design consultants, IT experts and even the cleaners.
Plus they sell through dealerships and service them with local agents.
So the outsourcing of these functions has driven a lot of the formal “decline” in manufacturing.
Anyone remember Jim Callaghan? As chancellor he imposed a Selective Employment Tax on services employees, so as to encourage manufacturing.
Know what? It didn’t work.
What JimW says.
Its like the early days of IT outsourcing. If a factory employed 100 people and 20 of them were IT specialists then that was 100 manufacturing jobs.
If the IT jobs were then outsourced to an IT services firm we then had 80 manufacturing jobs and 20 services and massive complaints about a loss of manufacturing jobs. Do the same for , say, cleaning, catering and even secretarial services and soon you could be down to 50 manufacturing jobs and 50 services jobs with the same number working in the factory.
This isn’t going to end well.