Former coal jobs ‘not replaced’

Some 90,000 jobs lost since the closure of most of the UK’s coal pits after the 1984/1985 miners’ strike have not been replaced, a report has said.

The Sheffield Hallam University study said employment in former mining areas lagged badly behind other regions.
Researchers also found higher levels of ill-health in coalfield areas.

They said five times more adults of working age claimed incapacity benefits than unemployment benefits – pointing to extensive “hidden unemployment”.

‘Sad reflection’

Professor Stephen Fothergill, who led the research marking the 20th anniversary of the end of the year-long dispute, said the report’s findings were a “sad reflection” on the scale and consequence of the job losses in the coal industry.

Estimates suggest that as many as 100,000 men in the coalfields are currently hidden unemployed
Sheffield Hallam University report

‘Anything to earn a crust’

The study said that only 60% of coal job losses in England and Wales since the early 1980s had been replaced by other forms of employment.

It added that the pay in the new positions – often in call centres or the service sector – was generally less than what people used to earn when they were still miners.

The extent to which former mining communities had managed to recover differed from place to place, the study said.

Slow recovery

While smaller mining areas in Leicestershire and Warwickshire were well on the way to full recovery, others, such as Northumberland and, in particular, South Wales, had made slow progress.

The report estimates that it will take an additional six or seven years to replace the lost coal jobs in Northumberland and that the recovery will take even longer in South Wales.

It did however say that the pace of job creation had quickened in all former mining areas thanks to recent growth in the economy and regeneration initiatives.

“The evidence supports the view that in the coalfields, as in some other parts of older industrial Britain, there has been a huge diversion of people with health problems from unemployment to incapacity benefits,” the report said.

“Estimates suggest that as many as 100,000 men in the coalfields are currently hidden unemployed in this way.

“An additional 90,000 male jobs would be needed to claw back all the job losses in the coal industry since the early 1980s and another 50,000 more to erode the inherited male job shortfall.”

In 1981, the coal industry employed 229,000 workers in England and Wales, but just 7,000 are employed today.

Only eight pits remain open in the UK today, compared with 170 at the time of the miners’ strike

BBC