Dodgy sums from Labour

Labour’s new policy says:

Under Labour’s Ready for Work policy, all young people who have been on the Jobseeker’s Allowance in the Work Ready category for six months will be offered full-time employment for six months on environmental and community projects.

So six months paid work.

Ready for Work jobs will pay at least the minimum wage.

That’s $15.25 an hour for 40 hours for 26 weeks which is $15,860 per person.

With an estimated 10,000 participants per year, Ready for Work will cost $60m a year.

At $15,860 per person and 10,000 participants that would be $158 million not $60 million. And this is before you even include any costs of administering the scheme which would be huge.

Labour’s credibility on economic costings remains woeful.

Even if you take account of the current benefit payments of $156 a week, that still leaves a additional cost of around $120 million a year – before any admin costs.