The Conservative party has the strongest policies on employment in the lead up to the 2015 general election, according to a survey by Maple Resourcing.
The building services recruitment company’s online survey of 104 people from the construction, rail and engineering industry, revealed that the policies respondents felt would help maintain a strong employment market include: increasing the minimum wage, creating more apprenticeships and continuing to offer support for businesses to grow.
| Policy | Respondent % |
| Reducing immigration | 27.30% |
| Increasing minimum wage | 38.60% |
| Creating more apprenticeships | 36.40% |
| Cutting taxes | 9.10% |
| Support for businesses | 34.10% |
Of those who responded, 88.6 percent said they would be voting, 2.3 percent said they would not vote and 9.3 percent were not sure at this time. The highest respondents who answered “Yes”, were those aged between 30-49 years (56.82%), followed by those aged over 50 years (15.91%).
| Gender | % of respondents |
| Male | 72.73% |
| Female | 27.27% |
| Age | % of respondents |
| Under 18 | 4.5% |
| 18-29 | 15.9% |
| 30-39 | 27.3% |
| 40-49 | 31.8% |
| 50 plus | 20.5% |
A month out from voting on 7th May, the opinion polls reveal that the two main parties are currently tied but within this demographic the Tories are clearly in the lead.
What do you think? Vote in our poll below.
Graphs and data sourced from Maple Resourcing
Title image courtesy of DFID – UK Department for International Development via Wikimedia Commons
Steff joined the HRreview editorial team in November 2014. A former event coordinator and manager, Steff has spent several years working in online journalism. She is a graduate of Middlessex University with a BA in Television Production and will complete a Master's degree in Journalism from the University of Westminster in the summer of 2015.
This sample is too small and unrepresentative to draw any conclusions from. The Conservative Party, the Labour Party, and the Lib-Dems are all committed to increasing the mnimum wage, increasing apprenticeships, and providing more supprt for businesses, so these are not issues on which there are very distinct political positions. The Conservatives have a more explicit commitment to reduce immigration, although the Coalition had no success in meeting the previous net migration target.