Serious questions, on the other hand, the concerns that worry millions, are studiously ignored. The lack of any serious political debate is so apparent it has even drawn extensive press comment. No party dares to say what it plans to do after the election. The official number of unemployed stands at 4.1 million, but none of the big parties has said how they concretely intend to overcome this intolerable situation. Thus, since the beginning of the year they have more than doubled the number of job creation schemes, while cutting the duration of such schemes from twelve to six or even three months.
All politicians know that the high point of the wave of job cuts is still to come.
The destruction of industrial jobs continues unabated. A forecast by business consultant Roland Berger predicts that a further 1.5 million jobs will go. In the building trades 200,000 jobs have been lost in the last two years alone. Administrative and service sector jobs are under even greater threat, where the consequences of computerisation coincide with rationalisation accompanying the European Monetary Union and the fallout from the economic crises in Asia and Russia. In banking, one in two workers will have to clear their desks over the next four years, amounting to half a million jobs lost.