Unemployment

There's an interesting public debate about unemployment going on in Denmark right now. The Big Morning Papers all had a story about how the National Postal Service needed 100 mailmen but only received 26 applications and ended up hiring only 3 of the 5 (of the 26) that actually showed up for a job briefing. This story emerged on the back of another story last week about some newspaper distributing companies that had to import 2700 polish workers to distribute their newspapers in the capital area, as apparently no-one living in Denmark wanted those jobs either. The city of Copenhagen has 22.000 registered unemployed.

These stories both caused a minor outrage, especially from politicians to the right of the middle, and people generally felt that if unemployed fit people refused to work, or even refused to apply for a job, they should be punished by reducing their access to social services and decreasing their financial benefits from the state.

I found this odd. Being a mailman is a respectable profession and well paid too - 11.500 GBP, with pension plan, 6 weeks vacation etc. Working for a distributing company pays a little less, but still enough to make an honest living. So, I was baffled.
Listening to a radio talk show today, it dawned on me that the media had completely failed to tell the whole story. It turned out that the 110 mailmen where only needed on Saturdays (so you can forget the 11.500 p.a) and that the distributing company required people to work odd hours (00.00 - 06.30) So the real reason behind the lack of applications was not due to the unemployed being lazy, but due to the fact that a) you cannot support yourself, or even a family, by working just Saturdays and b) Single moms and dads and everybody else with a healthy social life cannot work odd hours - and the companies were not prepared to pay enough for the night stints.

My lesson is (again alas) that one should NEVER trust what the media presents as fact and one should ALWAYS investigate before making up their mind.

JB