Unemployment soars by record level
Thursday, 16th July 2009
The number of jobless people in the UK rose by 281,000 in the three months to the end of May - a record quarterly increase.
Unemployment now stands at 2.38 million, the highest figure for 14 years, and experts are warning the number will be above three million by the end of the year.
John Philpott, Chief Economist at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), called the figures "wretched".
He said: "The latest official jobs figures offer a litany of wretched new records, with the unprecedented 281,000 quarterly (March-May) rise in unemployment on the Labour Force Survey (LFS) measure the most wretched of all. Any optimism that unemployment will peak below three million next year before the jobs outlook starts to improve would appear to have evaporated."
He added: "The record quarterly rise in LFS unemployment makes even more puzzling the trend in claimant unemployment (the number of jobless people claiming Jobseekers’ Allowance), which increased by a far less than expected 23,000 in June.
"The discrepancy between the levels of LFS unemployment and claimant unemployment now stands at over 0.8 million. Moreover, the trend in the scale of flows on and off Jobseekers’ Allowance is surprising given what we know about what has been happening to redundancies and vacancies in the economy.
"It is perfectly possible that the claimant count is telling us something positive about the underlying health of the jobs market which means that fewer people are signing on for Jobseekers Allowance than might have been expected in a severe recession. The trouble is we just don’t know – and neither do the DWP or ONS.
"With the unemployment rate such an important economic indicator and a key guide to monetary, fiscal, employment and welfare policy, it is vital that the Government should be able to offer a coherent explanation of changes in the claimant count. The DWP and ONS should join forces to conduct a quick inquiry to answer the claimant count conundrum and publish the findings by the early autumn."
Trades Union Congress (TUC) General Secretary Brendan Barber said: "Today's figures are truly horrendous. The people who have lost their jobs this month and who fear they will in months to come are not talking of recovery or green shoots.
"It's particularly worrying that over half a million unemployed people have been out of work for at least a year, including 133,000 young unemployed people. With a new generation of school and college leavers soon starting to look for work, our unemployment crisis will get even bigger.
"Yet rather than treat unemployment as a national emergency, growing numbers of politicians are calling for deep public expenditure cuts. This will make the Recession far worse - 200,000 nurses, teaches and other public servants will join the dole queue, private companies will lose business, public services will deteriorate and the deficit will get worse.
"The Government must do all it can to tackle joblessness and the permanent scar of long-term unemployment. The Job Guarantee could potentially provide real hope to young people on the dole but the work on offer has to be useful, skilled and decently paid."
