Jobcentre Minus.

(From Guardian Unlimited)

On Wednesday, the prime minister said he would do everything he could to prevent a further retraction of the steel industry after Corus announced that it would be cutting about 2,500 jobs from its production sites in the UK. On Tuesday, when Lord Mandelson announced his bail-out of the automotive manufacturers, he cited the prevention of further job losses as reason enough to worsen the government's balance sheet. Following Gordon Brown's "jobs summit " a few weeks ago, the government has been fighting hard to avoid the ultimate nightmare of any recession: mass unemployment.

All of these efforts have been aimed at saving or creating posts for people to fill. The increase in the claimant count by about 300,000 between January and December last year is meant to be prevented from growing even further by all the people currently losing their jobs eventually finding a new one or being helped to retrain for a different career. In theory, the latter should help long-term claimants the most -- the number of people claiming for more than six months broke through 250,000 late last year.

This all sounds very simple, but because the likelihood of getting these numbers down relies on the Jobcentre Plus being able to help claimants keep up with the expectations and needs of the job market, it actually is not. At the best of times it is under pressure from queues of people that need help to spot opportunities suitable for them or ways to improve their prospects. But some recent research from the Department for Work and Pensions suggests that it cannot do such things even when the claimant count is falling, let alone rising as it is now.

In 2006 the government started a two-year trial of the Jobseeker Mandatory Activity scheme (JMA), a pilot project that was aimed at helping those unemployed for six months or more back into employment. The programme put claimants through a three-day, work-focused course provided by private firms, from which they were meant to garner a plan for their route back to ...