INCREASING the number of sustainable jobs and making employment accessible to all are the twin objectives of "Growing and Sharing Our Employment" a major report from the Department of Enterprise and Employment. Unlike previous Government documents on employment, it gives as much weight to social considerations as to economic.

Reversing the dictum of a famous predecessor, the Minister, Mr Bruton, said at the launch of the document, "The rising tide does not lift all boats." The aim must not only be more growth and more jobs but measures to "improve the escape probabilities from unemployment" for the large number of people currently excluded from the labour market.

Unfortunately, the report is stronger on analysis than it is on "escape probabilities".

The only new measure proposed is a pilot scheme aimed at providing temporary welfare supports to single people in a number of partnership areas. Details have yet to be decided.

THE rationale behind the measure is explained in the report on the basis that there is a disproportionately high representation on the Live Register of single persons, particularly single men in all age groups over 20." At present, married couples with children can avail of Family Income Supplement to boost low pay.

The report shows that a couple with two children and one spouse working are only £36.87 a week better off if one off them takes a job at £160 a week, than if they remain on social welfare. The net benefit actually decreases as their salary rises, because they lose more social welfare. At £11,000 a year the net benefit is reduced to £27.93p a week.

In several sectors of the service industries, particularly catering, there is an increasing shortage of recruits because of low wages. The Government hopes that a version of FIS designed for single people may overcome this problem.

Mr Bruton says: "Sixty five per cent of unemployed people are single. Rates of pay are often low and they need an incentive to take a job. Once people get on the bottom rung of the ladder they very quickly move ahead, developing extra skills and earning power.

The report also says that emigration is no longer a realistic alternative for the unskilled. It points out that the Irish migrant community in Britain has "an above average proportion of people with no qualifications and an above average rate of unemployment".

The report also says that emigration is no longer a realistic alternative for the unskilled. It points out that the Irish migrant community in Britain has "an above average proportion of people with no qualifications and an above average rate of unemployment".

Yet the report also suggests that full employment is attainable. "The vast majority of very long term unemployment is accounted for by only 4 per cent of workers." In contrast, "more than 70 per cent of people in the labour force have never experienced unemployment".

BASED on these figures, Mr Bruton says that making jobs accessible to all is realistic and the key to a solution is creating effective measures to deal with the long term unemployed. To a large degree Mr Bruton is following a trail already blazed at the Cabinet table by the Minister for social welfare. Mr De Rossa, who has been putting in place schemes like the "Back to Work" allowance to make social welfare "more job friendly".

But one issue on which he parts company with his Democratic Left colleague is a minimum national wage. The report says that the evidence suggests a minimum wage could have "a potentially negative effect on jobs". Mr Bruton said the report made it "very clear that if we are to tackle minimum pay, rates have to be at a level where people can get on board. There has to be provision for low productivity jobs in our economy, as for high productivity ones."

He points out that the Joint Labour Committees, where unions and employers set the rates in low pay sectors like hotels and clothing, have worked well in the past.

THE report shows that the economy is delivering on jobs. The net increase has been 143,000 since the first of the current round of national pay deals, the Programme for National Recovery, was agreed in 1987.

Of course, half of those have only come on stream in the past year. Mr Bruton placed great emphasis on this late surge. "We have rounded the corner in terms of tackling unemployment, he said.

The news may indeed get better. The report shows that not only is the size of the workforce growing, but the number of unemployed is falling slowly and the number of young dependants is dropping dramatically. At the same time the number of pensioners is rising very slowly.

In other words, the total dependency ration, which was 61 per cent of the population in 1991, is set to fall to 47 per cent by 2006. On this basis it should be possible to make considerable reductions in income tax and thus make pay restraint, and even taking up employment in low paid jobs, a more attractive proposition.

However, Mr Bruton warned that as far as tax reform is concerned, "there will not be a `big bang'. It's a gradual process."

The problem is that after a decade of pay restraint there is growing impatience among both private and public sector workers to start enjoying more of the benefits from the current economic boom now.

Mr Bruton's plan looks very good on paper. The analysis could not be bettered, but there is still a dearth of ideas on how to spread the growth - and the jobs - around more evenly.