Posted: Oct 23, 2018 3:29 pm
I don't think any of that is supported by the evidence Alan.
I can find no public statement of policy difference between Tories and Labour on unemployment definitions, and certainly none relating to any of the terms "work with wages" and "work without wages". The unemployment figures are produced by the ONS (in that they are responsible for both the data collection via the labour force survey, and that they compile the raw data into the form used for the final published statistics, in accordance with the internationally agreed ILO and EU standards), not fed to the ONS.
Periodically there are academic groups and studies which attempt to quantify the economic contribution and value of "invisible" work, such as childcare by parents and family and housework, that certainly is "work without wages", but there's been no significant political pressure from any side to alter official GDP figures or employment/unemployment statistics to reflect these estimates.
ETA: A UK example: https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlab ... 2016-11-10
Some international comments and perspectives:
https://theconversation.com/womens-unpa ... tory-98110
http://www1.paho.org/hq/dmdocuments/201 ... d_work.pdf
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm ... id=2798620
I can find no public statement of policy difference between Tories and Labour on unemployment definitions, and certainly none relating to any of the terms "work with wages" and "work without wages". The unemployment figures are produced by the ONS (in that they are responsible for both the data collection via the labour force survey, and that they compile the raw data into the form used for the final published statistics, in accordance with the internationally agreed ILO and EU standards), not fed to the ONS.
Periodically there are academic groups and studies which attempt to quantify the economic contribution and value of "invisible" work, such as childcare by parents and family and housework, that certainly is "work without wages", but there's been no significant political pressure from any side to alter official GDP figures or employment/unemployment statistics to reflect these estimates.
ETA: A UK example: https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlab ... 2016-11-10
On average men do 16 hours a week of such unpaid work, which includes adult care and child care, laundry and cleaning, to the 26 hours of unpaid work done by women a week.
The only area where men put in more unpaid work hours than women is in the provision of transport – this includes driving themselves and others around, as well as commuting to work.
When looking at economic status, full-time students do the least amount of unpaid work, while mothers on maternity leave do the most.
ONS figures for 2014 show that total unpaid work had a value of £1.01tn, equivalent to approximately 56% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Some international comments and perspectives:
https://theconversation.com/womens-unpa ... tory-98110
http://www1.paho.org/hq/dmdocuments/201 ... d_work.pdf
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm ... id=2798620