1200 Jobs gone

Quite frequently we hear from politicians oh manufacturing isn't important the knowledge economy is more important, so what do we do when the jobs in knowledge start to vanish?

AstraZeneca announces plans to close Loughborough site

The centre develops treatments for lung and breathing problems.

One of Leicestershire's major employers is to shut its operation with the loss of almost 1,200 jobs.

Managers at AstraZeneca's research facility on the outskirts of Loughborough met staff to discuss their future on Tuesday.

The firm announced 8,000 worldwide redundancies in January, following more than 12,000 posts going as part of earlier efficiency plans.

Over the past 10 years more than £100m has been spent developing the site.

In a statement, the company said it had "shared with its employees further details of proposals designed to improve the productivity of its global research and development organisation."

The Loughborough site is expected to close by the end of 2011.

A smaller facility in Cambridge is also to close, the company said.

Pharmaceutical development work will cease at its Avlon base near Bristol with some work being transferred to Cheshire.

The firm announced 8,000 worldwide redundancies in January, following more than 12,000 posts going as part of earlier efficiency plans.

A picture tells 1000 words

See above, in effect graduate unemployment is even worse than we expected end of last year 40%+. These do not show up in the stats! as there has been a flight back to education. In that grads who cannot get work decide to go back into education instead. Anybody on JSA knows that if you do more than 15 hours a week you are not unemployed and therefore you fall out of the unemployment stats.

It's subtle but; (unemployment amongst those in education) + (those who are unemployed and not in education) should remain stable but it isn't. So those who are unemployed
are staying and joining education which lowers the figures.

You can see the flight to education , much more than previous recessions due to the lack of jobs. Adding in the move to part time work the Government should be seeing very low takes for
tax compared to what they are spending on tax credits and benefits.

However will it work?, in that these grads who go on for extra schooling will still leave with no experience and unfortunately it may give them a huge sense of entitlement. For the record when I graduated I had a sense of entitlement in that I'd worked at the same time as my studies and I thought now is the time for my reward.

Unfortunately I was wrong and after noticing <50 well paid graduate schemes for the entire country with everybody else at NMW or even less than that remember I started my graduate career on £5500 (only a bit more than I used to get working at Mc'ds in 1996 @ £2.15 an hour. Which dashed my optimism markedly.