I think this is something those who haven't had to interact with the Jobcentre nor the Conditionality aspects of Universal Credit (or the handful still on Jobseekers Allowance) don't actually appreciate. It's a waste of basically everyone's time, effort and money with the only net effect often being the traumatisation of the people that it's supposed to be supporting. The majority of people who come through the Jobcentre's front door break down into three main groups.
Group One: People who are unemployed, can seek work off their own back and will find a job on their own before too long.
Group Two: People who are unemployed, can't seek work due to ill health and therefore need support for a longer period of time.
Group Three: People who are unemployed, can seek work but might struggle to find work either due a lack of appropriate skills, due to ill health (they can do some work, just not a full time job or certain types of job), due to caring responsibilities (of the child or adult variety).
Group One don't require the help of the Jobcentre and, to be frank, the Jobcentre are probably getting in the way of them actually finding work. For instance, when I signed on JSA back in 2012/13(ish)
everyone who claimed JSA was sent on a three day skills course to assess their english, maths and IT skills and to help them set up email accounts. As a recent history graduate you can imagine that those three days were rather a waste of my time compared to actually trying to find work.
Group Two shouldn't need to deal with the Jobcentre because they're not fit for work but because of the broken nature of the system will have to jump through a lot of hoops to demonstrate this fact to the DWP and will probably need to regularly prove again that they remain unfit for work. We know that the Work Capability Assessment process has most probably killed people:
www.disabilityrightsuk.org
Group Three, meanwhile, the group which might actually benefit the most from some sustained support tend to find that the support offered by the Jobcentre is patchy at best often not especially useful. Either because the Jobcentre and staff aren't actually equipped to help people who actually need skills support (and mostly send them to private contractors who often make money of the taxpayer whilst doing very little to actually show for it) or the benefits system by design isn't well equipped to support them.
For instance say you're ill but you can still do your little part-time job of 10 hours a week, you almost certainly won't be found to have Limited Capability for Work by a Work Capability Assessment which means that you could be subject to full conditionality and required to seek more work or better paying work. But you certainly can't do more work and it's tough to find high paying jobs sufficient to turn off conditionality (which needs to be the equivalent of 35x the minimum wage for your age group, which the DWP could reduce due to your health but, good luck with that). So eventually you'll give up your job so you've got a better chance of passing a Work Capability Assessment because having to actively seek work to avoid a sanction is probably making you more ill.
And, of course, all of this for peanuts. At the moment the standard allowance for someone 25 or over is £368.74 per month (if you're under 25 you'll get £292.11 per month). You'll get at least some help with rent (for private tenants this is capped at the 30th percentile of the average rents in your area though there was no increase this year so despite rents going up the level of support remains the same, and if you're single, under-35 with no children you'll get an even lower shared room rate) and some help with your Council Tax. But any shortfalls in your rent, council tax and then all your other bills have to be met out of this £368.74 per month. If you're mortgaged, best of luck to you because the only help you'll get is towards your interest on up to £200,000 of your loan at a fixed interest rate of 3.03%, which you'll need to pay back when the house is sold or ownership transferred (with interest on top) and only get after 3 months anyway. Hope you got mortgage protection insurance...
The whole system is rotten. The people that don't need any actual support beyond some financial support whilst they sort themselves out are just having their task made more difficult by Jobcentre interference. The people who can't work are just being traumatised whilst the people who might actually benefit from some support are finding that the system is incapable of supporting them with their more complex needs.
As a taxpayer it makes me furious seeing the utter waste of time and money that goes on in the name preventing "idleness" or people "sponging of the state" whilst also traumatising people who desperately need support and proving utterly incapable of effectively helping the people who might actually benefit from some support, guidance and direction!