The days of forcing say a qualified jet engine designer that has been made redundant by Rolls Royce to go pick some cabbages or his benefits will cease are well gone. If they want to do that job then OK, but to force them - No!
What! .. if we have more jet engine designers than we need it's alright for them to be kept by the tax payer then? Well you do it. Others who have skills no longer in need have to retrain or do other work. What if we all refused work other than our preferred skill set? Is it just the elite who can be picky?
I think you missed the point. An unemployed individual is allowed for a time to dictate what job they want to do whilst claiming benefits. They just have to show that they have taken all reasonable steps to find it. The forcing of people immediately to do jobs that they don't want to do is long gone.
A young local solicitor friend was in the process of changing employer and decided to take a couple of months off in between jobs - it was summer after all!
He signed on at the Jobcentre as unemployed and received a weekly benefit payment with him telling them that he had a job to go to but just not yet.
I don't know about retraining - in all of my career I have done the same thing but at a much higher level the older I became. Never out of work, and each move was to both increase my income and take on more responsibility.