The study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and Centre for Cities on the scale of hidden unemployment in the UK raises an important issue (The ‘hidden jobless’: Liverpool’s centre may look different but the lack of work still feels like the 80s, 21 November). Anyone who has seen the workings of universal credit close at hand, along with the scant support given to jobseekers by the Department for Work and Pensions, will not be surprised to hear that hundreds of thousands of people, many of them seeking jobs for the first time, have abandoned hope of obtaining employment in the traditional and “official” way. They simply don’t figure in the statistics. It brings suffering to jobseekers but lets the government bask in the false glory of supposed full employment.
Gillian Dalley
London
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