The government's expansion of Jobcentres on Wheels has been presented as a practical way to "meet people where they are" and break down barriers to work. But the wider labour market backdrop raises a more fundamental question: is the UK facing a shortage of motivation or a shortage of jobs?
We examine the policy in context, looking at vacancy trends, regional imbalances, and the tension between activation policies and labour market realities.
🎯 Core Policy Questions
- Falling vacancies: Job opportunities declining for years, not just since pandemic
- Regional fragmentation: UK has many labour markets, not one unified system
- Activation limits: Vans can help job search but cannot create actual jobs
- Policy mismatch: Supply side solutions for demand-side problems
- Structural barriers: Economic inactivity driven largely by health, not motivation
📉 Vacancies Are Falling and Have Been for Years
While the government frames the initiative as part of a national effort to "Get Britain Working", the UK labour market has been cooling for some time.
Key trends over the past decade include:
- Long term decline in job vacancies: Especially since the post pandemic peak in 2022, with 39+ consecutive months of falls
- Rise in economic inactivity: Driven largely by long term sickness rather than lack of motivation
- Stagnant job growth: Many new roles are part time, temporary, or low paid
- Widening regional divide: London and South East consistently offering highest concentration of opportunities
- Intensifying competition: Millions of jobseekers competing for shrinking pool of roles
This means those roles are not evenly distributed across the country, creating fundamentally different labour market conditions in different regions.
The Vacancy Reality
The government's messaging assumes the main barrier to employment is access to support. But when job vacancies have been declining for nearly four years straight, the bottleneck may not be job search skills, it may be the actual availability of jobs.
🗺️ A National Slogan, a Fragmented Labour Market
The government's messaging assumes that the main barrier to employment is access to support. But the UK does not have a single, unified labour market. It has many:
🏭 Regional Labour Market Types
- Post industrial towns: Few large employers, limited vacancy growth
- Coastal communities: Seasonal, low paid work with limited progression
- Rural areas: Limited transport, childcare, and job density
- Urban centres: Higher vacancy density but higher living costs
- Commuter belt: Jobs concentrated in expensive areas requiring long commutes
In many of the areas receiving mobile Jobcentres such as Barrow in Furness, Blackpool, and parts of Wales the fundamental issue is not a lack of job search support. It is a lack of jobs.
The Geographic Mismatch
Data reveals stark contrasts in job availability:
- London: Highest job density but unaffordable housing costs
- South East: Strong professional services but transport dependency
- Northern regions: Lower vacancy rates, fewer high skilled opportunities
- Wales and Scotland: Rural areas particularly affected by limited transport and employer base
- Coastal towns: Seasonal fluctuations and limited year round opportunities
🚐 What the Vans Can Do and What They Can't
The mobile Jobcentre model has clear strengths within defined limits:
✅ What Mobile Jobcentres Can Achieve
- Reach disengaged people: Connect with those who never visit traditional Jobcentres
- Immediate support: Practical help with applications and CV writing
- Barrier removal: Help individuals overcome digital, health, or confidence barriers
- Training referrals: Connect people to skills development opportunities
- Outreach success: Early data shows over half of visitors were not on benefits
But these vans operate within the limits of the wider labour market. They cannot:
- Create new jobs: Cannot increase the actual number of available positions
- Increase job security: Cannot transform temporary roles into permanent ones
- Address regional decline: Cannot reverse decades of economic structural change
- Reverse vacancy trends: Cannot stop the long term fall in job opportunities
- Create employer demand: Cannot make businesses hire when they face cost pressures
This is the core tension: activation policies improve job search behaviour, but they do not increase the number of jobs available.
🧩 The Policy Logic Behind "Get Britain Working"
The UK has spent more than a decade emphasising supply side employment policy, focusing on the individual rather than the economy:
📈 Supply Side Focus Areas
- More conditionality: Stricter requirements for benefit recipients
- More job search requirements: Increased hours and activities mandated
- More support for "barriers to work": Individual focused interventions
- More pressure to move off benefits: Sanctions and time limits
- More activation programs: Training, coaching, and mentoring schemes
This approach assumes that jobs exist and the challenge is connecting people to them.
But when vacancies fall and insecurity rises, the logic becomes harder to sustain. The risk is that policy continues to push people into a labour market that cannot absorb them.
The Activation Paradox
Current policy creates several contradictions:
- Increased competition: More people seeking fewer available jobs
- Skills mismatch: Training for jobs that may not exist in target regions
- Sanction risk: Penalizing people for failing to find none existent opportunities
- Resource misallocation: Investing in job search rather than job creation
- False expectations: Promising employment outcomes when structural barriers persist
💰 Is This a Good Use of Public Funds?
Whether the vans represent "wasted funds" depends on the metric:
📊 Measuring Success by Different Criteria
✅ If the goal is outreach:
The vans appear effective. Early data shows that over half of visitors were not on benefits, meaning the service is reaching economically inactive people who would otherwise receive no support.
❓ If the goal is reducing unemployment:
The impact is less clear. Without more jobs especially secure, well paid ones increased job search activity may simply intensify competition rather than improve outcomes.
❌ If the goal is economic growth:
Mobile Jobcentres do not address the structural issues behind low productivity, regional inequality, or declining vacancy numbers.
Cost to Benefit Analysis
The investment must be weighed against alternative approaches:
- Direct job creation: Public sector employment in target areas
- Business investment incentives: Encouraging private sector expansion
- Infrastructure development: Improving transport and connectivity
- Regional development funds: Addressing structural economic imbalances
- Health service investment: Addressing root causes of economic inactivity
🎯 The Bigger Question: What Problem Is the Policy Trying to Solve?
The government frames the issue as one of access and engagement. Critics argue the real issue is structural:
🏛️ Government Framing
- Access barriers: People can't reach support services
- Engagement problems: Traditional Jobcentres don't work for everyone
- Individual barriers: Skills, confidence, digital exclusion
- Motivation issues: People need encouragement to seek work
📊 Structural Analysis
- Too few jobs: Vacancies declining for years
- Too little security: Available work is precarious or low-paid
- Too much regional imbalance: Jobs concentrated in expensive areas
- Health driven inactivity: Long term sickness, not motivation, driving trends
- Investment shortage: Too little job creation outside South East
If the labour market is the bottleneck, not the jobseeker, then activation policies however well delivered risk being misaligned with reality.
🔄 The Health and Work Connection
A significant driver of economic inactivity is long term sickness, which activation policies struggle to address effectively.
Health Related Barriers
Many people are economically inactive due to health conditions that job support cannot resolve:
- Chronic and varying conditions: Long term illnesses that limit work capacity
- Mental health issues: Depression, anxiety, and other conditions affecting work ability
- NHS waiting lists: People unable to work while awaiting treatment
- Care responsibilities: Looking after family members with health needs
- Workplace accessibility: Jobs that don't accommodate health conditions
Mobile Jobcentres can provide support, but they cannot cure illnesses or create accessible employment opportunities.
🏥 The Health System Connection
Rising economic inactivity due to long term sickness reflects broader problems in the UK health system: longer waiting lists, reduced preventive care, and inadequate support for chronic conditions.
Addressing employment outcomes may require health system investment as much as job support services.
🎬 Conclusion: Useful but Partial Solutions
The expansion of mobile Jobcentres may help individuals who need support, and it may improve engagement in communities that rarely interact with the DWP. But the wider labour market context raises a deeper question about the limits of activation based policy.
You can help people search for jobs.
You cannot search for jobs that do not exist.
Until the UK addresses the structural shortage of secure, well paid work and the regional imbalance in where those jobs are located, initiatives like Jobcentres on Wheels will remain useful, but ultimately partial, solutions.
🎯 Core Policy Implications
- Activation has limits: Cannot create jobs or address structural economic decline
- Regional policy matters: National slogans cannot solve local economic problems
- Health drives inactivity: Medical support may be more important than job support
- Vacancy trends are key: Job creation policy needed alongside activation policy
- Expectations need managing: Honest communication about probable outcomes
The mobile Jobcentre program embodies a broader tension in UK employment policy, the gap between what government can control (job search support) and what it struggles to influence (actual job availability).
Effective employment policy requires both better job search support and more jobs to search for. Current initiatives address the first challenge while largely ignoring the second.
The question facing policymakers is whether they will acknowledge this limitation and develop complementary policies focused on job creation, regional development, and health system investment or whether they will continue to assume that better activation alone can solve labour market problems that require structural economic reform.