The new government has begun to set out how it plans to tackle labour shortages: more sanctions for those on Universal Credit, and targeted support for people who are unemployed and over 50. The first of these is adding more cruelty to an already cruel benefits system. The second is mistargeted, and doesn’t make much sense.

Let’s start with new sanctions for Universal Credit claimants. The new rule will require benefit claimants working up to fifteen hours a week to take new steps to increase their earnings or face benefits sanctions. The current threshold is nine hours a week, but was soon to rise due to an increase in the amount someone had to earn to be exempt from work-related requirements.

Sanctions take the form of deductions in payments. But the standard Universal Credit payment is already shamefully low—just £77 per week for those 25 and over, and an even more meagre £61 per week for those under 25.

Sanctions make these already low payments even lower, potentially wiping out the entire standard payment, and can last for months. The latest data shows that six percent of those on Universal Credit payments with a conditionality—just over 100,000 people—are having their payments reduced due to sanctions.

Reducing benefits payments is bad at any time, but especially so when costs are rising as much as they currently are. This new policy is likely to disproportionately hit women, who are both more likely to be employed part-time and more likely to be in low-paid work.

This cruel element of the scheme should be scrapped, not extended further. Making our already cruel benefits system crueller for more people won’t solve labour market shortages. Instead, the government should be investing in good jobs, and ensuring that work pays by giving unions better access to workplaces to get pay rising and introducing a £15 minimum wage. And Universal Credit is a disaster that needs to be replaced. The TUC has set out how we can do that.

Onto the second idea: the government plans to introduce extra support to help recently unemployed over-50s get back into work. This is to address rising economic inactivity among that age bracket.

Rising economic inactivity, especially among older workers, is a definite issue. But there’s a fundamental confusion here. Unemployment and economic inactivity are two different things.

Unemployment is if you’re without a job, actively seeking work and able to start a job within the next two weeks. Economic inactivity is the group of workers who are neither employed or unemployed. It’s defined as those without a job who have not sought work in the last four weeks and/or are not available to start work in the next two weeks. This includes groups such as students, retirees, people looking after family, and those who are unable to work due to sickness or disability.

Unemployment isn’t too much of an issue among older workers. The number of unemployed people over 50 has actually dropped by nine percent since before the pandemic. The unemployment rate for over-50s is just 2.5 percent, and the unemployment rate for those aged 50-65 is at a record low of 2.6 percent.

Inactivity among over-50s, in contrast, has increased by over 600,000 people. This is a substantial part of a wider labour market trend that has seen the labour market shrink by 820,000 people (4.3 percent) since the pandemic began.

A smaller labour market has contributed to labour shortages, but you can’t tackle inactivity among over-50s with targeted unemployment support. Instead, we need more inclusive workplaces for older workers. This includes safer workplaces, funding training and support for older workers, helping older workers to manage disabilities and health conditions by ensuring that employers put in place reasonable adjustments for disabled workers and tackling workplace discrimination, and strengthening flexible working rights to allow older workers to manage their workloads.

Alongside those changes, we need reforms to the state pension and benefits system so that people of all ages who are unable to work can maintain a decent standard of living.

These new plans from the government seem to demonstrate that it is misjudging how to tackle labour shortages. Ministers are both misdiagnosing the causes, and getting the solutions wrong. We don’t need a crueller benefits system, or targeted unemployment support for a group of workers with a low unemployment rate.

Instead, we need better-paid work, more inclusive workplaces, investment in good jobs and training, and a more generous benefits system backing all this up.