On New Year's Day, the Financial Times published a survey of 86 economists.

It was about as riveting as it sounds. The question before the soothsayers was whether Britain would achieve full employment, in the technical sense, in 2015. Typically, the experts agreed only that even a definition of the term "is almost impossible" these days.

That's odd, you might think. Isn't full employment one of George Osborne's big ambitions for Britain? Don't the Chancellor and his colleague harp constantly about the jobs that they - with their magic wands - have created? Isn't an unemployment rate of 5.8% top of the list of pre-election coalition boasts?

Among those consulted by the FT was Andrew Simms of the New Economics Foundation. His response is worth quoting: "If there is anything remotely that can be described as full employment in the UK in 2015 it will be characterised by a large volume of part-time, low-paid, insecure work, enough to bring official unemployment figures down, but hiding a gross deterioration in the quality of paid work."

That sounds accurate. Last November, the TUC reported that while the number of full-time employees in Britain had increased by just 25,898 between 2008 and 2014, the ranks of part-time workers had swollen by 378,050. Those declaring themselves self-employed, full-time and part-time, were up by 309,079 and 336,533 respectively. Whether you define those working for themselves as born-again entrepreneurs, or as people just scratching a living, this is no job-creation miracle.

Ministers don't mind. For them, only certain numbers matter. David Mundell, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State and our only Tory MP, was at it the other morning. Faced with a Labour attack and the news that eight in 10 jobs created in the last five years are low paid, he retorted that 107 new Scottish jobs had materialised each and every day in the same period. That wasn't the point, of course. Still, Mundell thought we should know.

What kinds of job? For whom? For what reward? At what cost to the state, despite every government attack on benefits, when it has to subsidise low pay? These issues are central to the kind of economy and society we might achieve. Mundell and his sort do not dwell on such things.

They should. Tories can persuade themselves that a low-wage economy is just the ticket. They can believe that any job is worth having, especially if the benefits system can be turned into a stick to beat people into line. It doesn't alter the fact that something has gone badly wrong with the labour market since the great recession began. Zero-hours contracts tell the story.

The TUC had plenty to say about those the last time the Office for National Statistics released figures. In 2014, reported the Congress, 57.6 per cent of those on zero-hours outside London earned less than the living wage. In the English capital, only one in four employees was receiving the rate. Overall, 40 per cent of such workers had no consistent income: it varied from week to week. And better than two in five of the young people on zero hours said they worked part-time because they couldn't get a full-time post.

Almost a year later, the official unemployment rate, the one that makes no concessions to underemployment, low pay, or the age group worst affected, is still falling. The tale remains the same. While the ONS estimates the number of Scots on zero hours at 60,000 - an underestimate, yet again - it reckons that fully 82 per cent of new jobs created since 2010 are low paid.

Across the UK, meanwhile, the number of zero-hours contracts has increased from 1.4 million to 1.8 million. The ONS was quick to correct Labour when it confused people with contracts while commenting on the figures. If the statistical office is right, 697,000 individuals have a zero-hours contract as a main job. This means, first, that the Scottish figure has been reached by a crude population percentage. It also means that a lot of people are working two contracts, or have just understood what their low-paid job involves.

Either way, the ONS says the 697,000 figure is an increase of 111,000 on the previous year. So if the totals say unemployment fell from 2.34 million in December 2013 to 1.86 million in December 2014, where do all those zero-hours contracts, those reluctant part-timers, and those newly self-employed workers fit in? To take the shine off a little more, youth unemployment was 16.2 per cent at the year's end. That was 740,00 youngsters and the number was up, albeit slightly, on the previous quarter.

Those were the ones who couldn't even land the zero-hours contract or the part-time job. They hadn't won the chance to join a casualised, low-paid workforce in a labour market altered out of all recognition. They are not as fortunate as their peers, those with no right to regular hours, and no permission to take a second job. They haven't won the privilege of having to be available at all times, or face having shifts cancelled without notice. Three-quarters of a million of the young don't even have that kind of luck.

Economists will tell you the labour market is "distorted". They will also confirm that British productivity leaves something to be desired. A few will argue that there might be a connection. What's clear is that some employers treated the great recession as an opportunity to drive down wages and exploit the zero-hours phenomenon for all it was worth. The flood of numbers, month upon month, says more: the situation is becoming permanent.

The coalition says it plans to end "exclusivity" in zero-hours contracts. Labour has its sights on "exploitative" - a key qualification - employment terms, but would do the same. Further, it would guarantee compensation for cancelled shifts and insist that workers are offered fixed-hours contracts after a set period. Government and opposition still maintain, however, that the flexibility of zero-hours suits some people. No doubt. So why not have them opt in to such contracts and insist on proper jobs for everyone else?

If not, we are preparing a miserable future for the coming generation. Or rather, we are preparing no sort of future. Since when did these zero-hours jobs involve prospects, in the old sense? By what stretch of someone's imagination do they allow for the raising of families, the purchase of homes, or for self-respect? This is not the world we promised the young. And they know it.

As I write, the FT is busy again. Household consumption, it reports, "underpinned UK growth in the fourth quarter". How reliable will those consumers be in a low-wage Britain? How about the housing market, that national substitute for contentment, when buying any sort of home becomes unthinkable for the greatest majority of the young? And if anyone is wondering, a poverty-pay economy can whistle for productivity. Other countries are better at that hellish game.

An economy built on shoddy foundations will fail. It's not complicated: people held in contempt return the favour. And they despise those who steal their future.