Overtime decline reflects difficult jobs market

01/12/2009

A jobs expert has reacted to news that fewer Britons are working paid overtime than before.

Duncan Brown, director of reward services at the Institute for Employment Studies, said that there was less work for people to do in the recession, with many employees having to take pay freezes and even reductions to working hours as alternatives to redundancy.

The comments follow the release of figures from the Trades Union Congress, showing that the number of Britons working paid overtime dropped by 500,000 to four million over the past 12 months.

In all, the workers earned an extra £10 billion during the year - down from the previous 12 months' total of £11 billion.

Mr Brown said: "Overtime has fallen significantly as the volume of work has fallen.

"In some places some people have gone to short-term working and taken pay cuts just to preserve jobs … Employers in my experience are not forcing people to work unpaid, quite the reverse as there isn't the demand there for overtime to be worked."

Official unemployment figures suggest that joblessness in the UK is at a 14-year high of almost 2.5 million people.

Tags; Young Family Finances, Job loss, Credit Card Lifestyle, Recent Graduate Debt,

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