Employment isn't a simple matter - the numbers hide complex picture of poverty, precarity and the need for opportunity

The government's favourite fallback when criticised is to turn to the employment figures. Theresa May pulled the figures out at last week's PMQs, saying that she noticed the opposition leader hadn't raised the subject with her.

But the government's excitement about those figures is hard to square with the reality of life in this economy for ordinary workers.

The fact that the dominant corporate culture in Britain sees it as a viable strategy to lay off thousands of workers in 'restructuring', explains a lot about how most of the people in poverty in Britain can be in work - suffering in poverty despite having paying jobs.

Employment may be high, but big questions remain about the quality of employment. Retail may not be work that produces the greatest satisfaction, but it does provide opportunities for those who need them most - like a ladder to management experience and the stability that can provide.

The latest threat to that slender social mobility ladder is the restructuring happening at Tesco, where unions are afraid that as many of 15,000 jobs are going to be cut, some two dozen per store - more job losses at the firm, that follow on from some ten thousand others lost in the last four years.

Uncertainty and precarity are becoming the norm. Average wages remain below what they were in 2010. Income equality in Britain continues to decline. And amidst these pressures, the welfare safety net has been diminished. This is the pattern that lies hidden behind the employment figures.

Over time, of course employment won't stay the same. Some kinds of work will disappear and others will replace them. Perhaps, over time, work itself will change beyond recognition - to no longer be the 'work to live' system we are familiar with. But it will change.

It isn't good enough for Conservatives to preach innovation, to preach flexibility. That approach is leaving people with no stability and rising anxiety. Trapped in a precarious working life that isn't rewarding people. There has to be a better way.

Brexit looms, hovering menacingly over everything, threatening to diminish workers rights and job security, ordinary people need reassurances about the future. The old ladders to prosperity for working class people are being kicked down.

It's no good talking up the figures when thousands are facing layoffs. What people need is to be able to depend upon practical support when they lose work, and the same as they try to develop the skills to find a new path forward. To know that there are paths they can take, opportunities for a stable life.

That means more intervention and more guidance. More communication, to let people know where the paths are and what people will need on those roles. This is only the beginning of what is needed, but in a time of crisis you have to deal with the emergency first.

'Housing market' is a lie - there is no market, only a corporate monopoly, fueling a crisis, that needs desperately to be broken

Government right-to-buy policy is plugging holes in the greedy housing sector, but is unsustainably syphoning homes form social housing to do so.

Britain's housing crisis rumbles on. When Theresa May returns to the role of Prime Minister in earnest, to face whoever will be (at least nominal) leader of the opposition, getting to grips with housing has to be at the top of the list.

An uncomfortable fact for the Conservative leader is that the money made by private landlords from housing benefit - received as a welfare benefit by households in order to pay their rent - has doubled over the last decade (Gayle, 2016).

That fact goes side by side with the continued rise in rents and prices, escalating beyond reality for the overwhelming majority of people (Chakrabortty, 2016), and the failure of successive governments to build sufficient housing. And then there is the siphoning off of homes from social housing stock (Williams, 2016).

To plug shortfalls in properties available for purchase by those with the means, former Chancellor George Osborne raided social housing and housing associations. Rent-to-buy took affordable housing for the least well off, to feed a greedy and bloated system in danger of collapse.

All of these facts point to a very particular problem. The housing system is very much tailored to the interests of a small group of people. Those who own property and those who have capital to spend, playing in a housing market that is exclusively for them.

Conservative policy has failed the worst off and served only an upper middle class of wealthy property owners and those fortunate enough to already have some 'equity' in the system. Everyone else, the poor and the young, is automatically frozen out.

For some this is a double blow. While private landlords reap astounding profits from housing benefits - since the government effectively subsidises this rentier practise, so literally encourages this state of affairs - it is the taxpayer that is funding this policy.

What is more astounding is that investing public funds instead in a big increase in homes in the social housing sector would actually reduce this private landlord subsidy by billions (Gayle, 2016), saving taxpayers huge sums at a time when spending on essential services is stretched thin.

Amongst the first tasks has to be to get to grips with the rental sector. New York housing chief Alicia Glen has argued that Britain's problem is the expensive and inefficient private landlording system (Murray, 2016), which flies in the face of the lower costs, and so cheaper rents, of operating at scale - although that implies that the purpose is efficient service not self-enrichment of rentiers.

But larger organisations, operating at scale shouldn't be the end of the story. There is room and need for mutuals and cooperative principles - for rental housing that can operate at scale and which honours the stake held by those investing time and money in living in those properties.

However, this is nothing less than a complicated situation. Not all private landlords bad or greedy. For some it is an essential source of income in hard times - look at the difficult situation facing tourist trammelled Barcelona, where efforts to stop illegal renting to tourists runs up against the needs of people with otherwise limited sources of income.

A small clan of property owners are being enriched by rising property prices as most people are simply cut off from access. Some exploit that position further as rentiers, raking in cash from private renters and from public subsidy. It is clear that a new approach is needed.

Part one of any response has to be public investment: build more housing and make most of it affordable, truly affordable, social housing. So many ills could be fixed through this one act of government spending, one that would pay itself back many times over.

But part two is more difficult. The entire housing sector needs to be urgently rethought, because it is not fit for use. Housing, a human essential, a necessity like fresh water, is being held ransom by those few holding it as property - stifling supply and bloating prices in bubbles that have disastrous rippling results.

Not least, steps should be taken to discourage unproductive property accumulation - like land banking or small rental property portfolios that gouge prices - and policies such as land value taxes should be taken into serious consideration, because the phrase 'housing market' is a lie. There is no market, only a corporate monopoly that needs desperately to be broken.