Policy Press
5 The low-pay, no-pay cycle: its pattern and people’s commitment to work
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Abstract
This chapter (and the two which follow) offer a description and analysis of the low-pay, no-pay cycle from the point of view of those caught up in it. Firstly, the chapter examines and describes the long-term pattern of churning between low paid jobs, ineffectual training and employability programmes and unemployment that was found in earlier research studies undertaken by the research team with interviewees in their teens and twenties. The chapter goes on to show how this pattern of working was also found in the same interviewees, via this current study, when they were in their thirties. Exactly the same pattern of the low-pay, no-pay cycle was found amongst the older people, in their 40s and 50s. Thus the chapter concludes that so-called entry level jobs do not act as stepping stones to more secure and better employment and that these experiences are not limited to the youth stage but continue over the life course, becoming for economically marginalised groups a permanent feature of life in low-pay, no-pay Britain.
Abstract
This chapter (and the two which follow) offer a description and analysis of the low-pay, no-pay cycle from the point of view of those caught up in it. Firstly, the chapter examines and describes the long-term pattern of churning between low paid jobs, ineffectual training and employability programmes and unemployment that was found in earlier research studies undertaken by the research team with interviewees in their teens and twenties. The chapter goes on to show how this pattern of working was also found in the same interviewees, via this current study, when they were in their thirties. Exactly the same pattern of the low-pay, no-pay cycle was found amongst the older people, in their 40s and 50s. Thus the chapter concludes that so-called entry level jobs do not act as stepping stones to more secure and better employment and that these experiences are not limited to the youth stage but continue over the life course, becoming for economically marginalised groups a permanent feature of life in low-pay, no-pay Britain.
Chapters in this book
- Front Matter i
- Contents iii
- List of figures and boxes iv
- Acknowledgements v
- Introduction 1
- Poor work, welfare and poverty 11
- Researching the low-pay, no-pay cycle and recurrent poverty 39
- The low-pay, no-pay cycle: the perspectives and practices of employers and ‘welfare to work’ agencies 61
- The low-pay, no-pay cycle: its pattern and people’s commitment to work 79
- Searching for jobs: qualifications, support for the workless and the good and bad of informal social networks 101
- Poor work: insecurity and churning in deindustrialised labour markets 125
- ‘The ties that bind’: ill health and caring and their impact on the low-pay, no-pay cycle 143
- Poverty and social insecurity 167
- Conclusions 193
- References 225
- Index 247
Chapters in this book
- Front Matter i
- Contents iii
- List of figures and boxes iv
- Acknowledgements v
- Introduction 1
- Poor work, welfare and poverty 11
- Researching the low-pay, no-pay cycle and recurrent poverty 39
- The low-pay, no-pay cycle: the perspectives and practices of employers and ‘welfare to work’ agencies 61
- The low-pay, no-pay cycle: its pattern and people’s commitment to work 79
- Searching for jobs: qualifications, support for the workless and the good and bad of informal social networks 101
- Poor work: insecurity and churning in deindustrialised labour markets 125
- ‘The ties that bind’: ill health and caring and their impact on the low-pay, no-pay cycle 143
- Poverty and social insecurity 167
- Conclusions 193
- References 225
- Index 247
