Best Insurance

25% of Unemployed women have been out of work for more than a year(08-Aug-2011)

As per the some of the latest reports released by Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR), more than one in four women who are unemployed have been out of work for more than a year. About 260,000 women in the UK have been unemployed for more than 12 months. The report also said that women’s position in the labour market was becoming increasingly insecure and accounting to almost more than 40% of the redundancies in the recent months.

One of the reason for women being out of employment for more than men is to do with the fact that the traditional employers who have been more skewed in terms of employing women, such as local government and the NHS have been making mass redundancies and there is no sign of any recruitment for the foreseeable future and secondly expensive child care and low tax credits means that mums have little real choice and are in many instances better off staying at home looking after children.

When compared to the other major European economies, it is not surprising that UK lags behind other major European economies. As per IPPR, Norway has the one of the highest female employment rate at 73.3%, Denmark at 71.1% and Sweden with 70.3%, while the UK is significantly low at 64.6%.

A Department for Work and Pensions spokesman said: “We are committed to helping all jobseekers back into sustainable employment. Women who are looking for a job should visit their local Jobcentre where they will be given advice and be able to take advantage of the 10,000 jobs we take every working day.

Stuart Boseley, Director of Best Insurance commented on these figures and said that in the recent months, the number of women enquiring for redundancy insurance has doubled. He also added that many of them unfortunately delay the decision and tend to contact after they have been informed about their position being made redundant and do not qualify to buy redundancy insurance. It probably is due to the fact that in several households, the income from women is still treated as a supplementary and the same rigour is not given to protect it as is given to the primary bread winner.

Best Insurance has a range of income protection and payment protection products and do not have any differentials based on gender or gender based qualifying approach. The wide flexibility in its products in terms of excess and the benefit period that can be chosen helps Best Insurance provide bespoke advice in terms of income protection insurance and payment protection insurance based on customer’s individual circumstances.