Policy Exchange released a report last week about the pay gap between public and private sector workers from which only the largest rather than the best figures made it into the media, leaving the coverage strictly accurate but not particularly enlightening, to the aggravation of many commentators.

Today, the think tank turned to another sensitive area with a report arguing that the contributory principle behind off-work benefits needs to be reinforced, with more responsibilities to search for work in return for the payments.

But how are they selling this to the media? The press release on their website makes a range claims to back up their conclusions, which have been picked up by various media. We checked where they came from and how fairly their reflect their source.

“Nearly 5.5 million adults now living in households where no-one is in work”

True. National Statistics on Work and worklessness among households 2010 show 5,408,000 16–64 year olds are living in workless households.

“Claimants are able to turn down any job they do not want to do for at least the first three months of making a claim”

Claimants are required to give a good reason for turn down a job to their job centre plus adviser. However, in those months the definition of a good reason seems to be pretty flexible in practice.

A spokesman for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) explained that in the first few months people are able to try to find the sort of job they actually want but after three months the job centre adviser will push them to look wider to make sure they actually get a job.

As time goes by the job centre will become more and more demanding but there is no single standard as decisions are made by the individual adviser about the individual claimant.

So what might be accepted as a good reason for turning down a job offer might be much more flexible in the first thirteen weeks than it would later on in the process but a good reason is required at all times.

The spokesman told us: “You can rest assured that you can’t just go to the job centre and say that I’ve had three job offers and just turned them down.”

They also pointed out that most claimants managed to get a job within the first three months (historically true, although it seems to take a few more weeks now).

“The average jobseeker currently spends just one hour a day looking for work”

This claim is not attributed in the press release but helpfully Policy Exchange referred us to the following comment in an official report: “There was a slight increase—from an average of 6.5 hours to 7.1 hours—in the amount of time that people devoted to looking for work before and after the introduction of Jobseeker's Allowance.”

However, the report was published by what was then the Department of Social Security back in 1999 and may or may not be a reliable guide to the behaviour of today’s jobseeker.

Even if it is still accurate the average behaviour is not necessarily what very many claimants actually do.

For a fuller picture we derived the table below from 2011 DWP research into attitudes among out-of-work people which was also cited by Policy Exchange. Based on a survey of claimants and potential claimants, it categorises out-of-work people into different groups and shows a range of figures for the average time spent each week trying to find a job.

“Over a third of benefit claimants felt that there was nothing wrong with choosing to stay on benefits rather than looking for work and that claiming benefits should be an option over having to work.”

Policy Exchange helpfully referenced the source of this claim even in their press release. It comes from a DWP survey of out-of-work people aiming to classify them according to their attitudes to work.

Full Fact searched in vain for a question in the survey that asked people to agree or disagree with that statement. In fact, as the report explains, the claim is derived from the descriptions of three of the segments that researchers identified among interviewees:

“11% of benefit claimants ‘feel fully justified being on benefits and believe they have discovered that life without the added complication of work has much to recommend it’ [the ‘benefits are better’ group]. Another 9% felt that ‘to work or claim benefits is simply a choice individuals should be free to make – there is no right or wrong about it’ [‘status quo seekers’]. A further 11% felt that ‘job search is less urgent as they make the most of the benefits of not working [‘balanced seekers’]. In short, nearly a third of claimants feel relatively happy being on benefits and have little motivation to find work.

Although Policy Exchange refers specifically to benefit claimants, the report is based on interviews with a variety of out-of-work people with the target sample having seven claimants to every three non-claimants. The way the groups of interviewees was defined was "closely monitored" to ensure that the segments identified had a cross-over between different groups of claimants and non-claimants.

The report states in relation to the many ways of segmenting the interviewees that were considered: "Although some segments were dominated by specific quota groups, there was also a good degree of cross-over in all segment solutions, which met the ingoing objective of not re-creating existing groupings of individuals based on benefits and demographics alone."

It is therefore possible, but probably not likely, that one of more of the segments from the DWP's chosen solution which Policy Exchange are referring to were dominated by non-claimants. If this is the case it would undermine Policy Exchange's assertion. We are making enquiries with DWP to establish whether this is the case.

There is certainly a stretch involved in going from an attempt to classify the attitudes of broad groups of out-of-work people to making a specific claim about the numbers of benefit claimants with particular attitudes.

It may or may not be the case that if the survey had explicitly asked benefits claimants whether they agreed with the statement formulated by Policy Exchange the numbers would look different. However, on the evidence we have at the moment it seems like a plausible if simplistic reflection of the DWP’s conclusions. It is interesting that the three groups Policy Exchange singles out are not the three least active groups.

Segments of out-of-work people identified by the DWP

Hours is the total of hours spent on five activities: researching types of paid work; checking for vacancies; preparing or updating CV; applying for jobs and attending job interviews.

* One or more categories was designated ‘less than half an hour’

Conclusion

As ever, there are interesting things to discover when you dig behind the press release but Policy Exchange seems to have used its sources fairly and all the claims are justifiable.

Footnote: Latest data on Jobseekers’ Allowance Claim Durations

ONS Crown Copyright Reserved [from Nomis on 20 May 2011] United Kingdom, March 2011 - April 2011 (inclusive)

UPDATE 23 May 2011: This article was update to correct references to the DWP's research into attitudes among out-of-work people as references to attitudes among Jobseekers' Allowance claimants. More analysis was added to the 'Third of benefits claimants section' as to whether it was reasonable for Policy Exchange to use the results of this research to refer to benefits claimants alone.

Photo credit: David Hawgood