Jobless total surges to worst in 12 years
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Unemployment surged past two million for the first time in 12 years today, while the number of people signing on for benefit soared by a record 138,000 last month, grim new figures showed today.
The Government was hit by a raft of gloomy news, with redundancies reaching a record high, jobs and vacancies falling and more people claiming jobseeker's allowance.
The total number of people out of work, including those not eligible for benefit, jumped by 165,000 in the quarter to January to 2.03 million, the worst figure since Labour came to power in the summer of 1997.
The quarterly rise was the highest since 1991, and the total has now increased by 421,000 over the past year, said the Office for National Statistics.
Jobseeker's allowance claimants increased by 138,400 in February, the 13th consecutive monthly rise and the largest monthly increase since records began in 1971.
The new total of 1.39 million is almost 600,000 higher than a year ago and is the highest figure since 1998.
A total of 266,000 people became redundant in the three months to January, the worst figure since records began in 1995 and up by 86,000 on the previous quarter.
The number of jobs fell by 203,000 to 31.3 million in the quarter to December, the largest slump since 1992.
Vacancies fell by 74,000 to 482,000 in the three months to February, the lowest total since comparable records began in 2001.
Other figures showed that average earnings increased by 1.8 per cent in the year to January, the lowest since records began in 1991, while for the month of January alone wages fell by 0.2 per cent - the first time this has ever happened.
The unemployment rate is now 6.5 per cent, an increase of 1.3 per cent over the year, the highest figure since the end of 1997.
The number of people employed in the public sector was 5.78 million in December, up by 15,000 over the quarter and by 30,000 over the year, while employment in private firms fell by 13,000 to 23.6 million over the quarter and by 105,000 over the year.
The only piece of good news for ministers in today's figures was a 102,000 fall in the number of people classed as economically inactive, to 7.8 million, the lowest for almost three years.
The figure includes people looking after a relative, those on long-term sick leave, students and people who have given up looking for work.
Manufacturing productivity fell by 5.6 per cent in the quarter to January, the biggest cut since 1985.
Unemployment among 16 to 24-year-olds increased by 23,000 to 621,000 in the quarter to January, while the number of people out of work for at least a year was 460,000, up by 23,000 from the three months to October.
Today's data also showed a 48,000 fall in the number of people in full-time employment in the latest quarter, to 21.8 million, and a 50,000 increase in part-time workers, to 7.55 million.
The TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: "This is another milestone in the return of mass unemployment to the UK, and it will get worse before it gets better as unemployment always persists even after a recovery starts.
"But this unemployment has not just been made in Britain, and requires an international response. It is beginning to look like the G20 summit may not agree the co-ordinated boost to the world economy called for by Barack Obama and Gordon Brown.
"International summits may seem a long way from the dole queues, but without such a stimulus unemployment will go higher and last longer.
"We need to put every pressure on world leaders to work together to fight the recession."
Paul Kenny, general secretary of the GMB, said: "As well as the misery for the two million on the dole, add the fear of millions of others who know that they too are at risk of redundancy. We do not know who the next million to lose their job will be.
"The harsh reality is that capitalism is revealed as anarchy writ large. Voters are not known to vote for anarchy. This could impact on voters at the next election."
Peter Mooney, of Employment Law Advisory Services, said he believed the figures may be an under-estimate of the true level of unemployment.
"This is a huge psychological blow to British business. While the figures seem shocking, we are not in the least surprised. The number of firms seeking help in making redundancies has sky-rocketed, and that is continuing, shooting up week on week.
"These figures are at best a fuzzy picture of what was true up to January - but things have worsened considerably since then.
"We are seeing jobs slashed drastically - especially in the North East, West Midlands, North West and parts of London."
Alan Tomlinson, partner at licensed insolvency practitioner Tomlinsons, said he had never been so busy, adding: "Companies of all sizes, and in all sectors, are folding by the day, putting more and more people out of a job.
"The CBI's prediction, last month, that unemployment will peak at just over three million in the second quarter of 2010 could prove to be wildly optimistic."
David Kern, chief economist at the British Chambers of Commerce, said: "The outlook for unemployment is worsening and there is an urgent need for action. At this rate, unemployment looks set to reach 3.2 million in 2010.
"Even with some staff accepting pay freezes and working fewer hours, it is clear that employers are facing significant financial pressures.
"There is a vital need for steps specifically aimed at preventing a damaging loss in our industrial skills base. Temporary measures such as wage subsidies need to be seriously considered."
Baroness Valentine, chief executive of business group London First, said: "We need swift action to support investment and employment - it costs much less to keep people in work than to create new jobs.
"Government must lead from the front in setting up apprenticeship schemes in Whitehall.
"We need new investment in productive infrastructure - such as electrification of the outer London rail line - and get moving on existing programmes, such as improvements to further education colleges."
Unemployment in the regions between November and January was:
Region Total; unemployed; Change on quarter; Unemployment rate
North East; 109,000; plus 5,000; 8.6%
North West; 262,000; plus 19,000; 7.7%
Yorkshire/Humber; 186,000; plus 1,000; 7.1%
East Midlands; 147,000; plus 20,000; 6.4%
West Midlands; 210,000; plus 29,000; 7.9%
East; 165,000; plus 29,000; 5.5%
London; 307,000; minus 1,000; 7.5%
South East; 212,000; plus 12,000; 4.8%
South West; 139,000; plus 24,000; 5.1%
Wales; 109,000; plus 15,000; 7.6%
Scotland; 135,000; plus 1,000; 5.1%
N Ireland; 46,000; plus 10,000; 5.7%
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Comments
I come from a planet called Earth. You come from a planet called a tiny Island where people live in shells called planet England. Yes I was aiming at this article, about your jobless rise! If your "democratically" elected leaders did not poke too much their noses elsewhere in the world and wasted billions of pounds invading a sovereign country over lies to please your Zionist Nazis, you would not have come to this situation where you cannot look after you sick and your unemployment rising! Yes it's very linked. 80% of Blairite task during a decade was wasted about how to"deal with Muslims" whose countries you have always colonised for the past 400 years!
The money is all gone, worse than that we have spent for the next couple of generations too. What did we get for our money, crap.
A public sector budget doubled from 300 bil to 600 bil
Education at Primary, Secondary and Higher level in disarray
Health Care that kills people through lack of organisation and skills
Police that are underfunded in favour of CCTV
Encouragement of gambling and drinking
An energy generating crisis
Fear of terrorism as a backlash to an illegal war
Torture
An Environmental Policy that involves more cars, runways and coal fired power
Fiddling of expenses in Government
A pension Black Hole
No interest on savings
House prices that are unsustainable
A Financial Sector who are robbing the Country blind before they leave
An unrepresentative Electoral System that robs us of choice
Unemployment rising rapidly
THE LIST GOES ON
This is not sudden, it has been going on for many years,
WE MUST STOP IT NOW
Time to say enough is enough http://www.gopetition.co.uk/online/2564
To change the things I can
Serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
And Wisdom to always tell the difference.
>> Good isn't it? Came across it from Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5.
As for England - give up mate, leave, the rest of the world is big, cheaper and has less people..
Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.
Amen.
~ Reinhold Niebuhr
Here is my homeland
Trouble is when the recession ends how can you get people (most who've been out of work for 12 months or more) get back in to work ?
Last week I spoke to a few friends who have been unemployed for 9 months they all said when ever they found jobs, they never even got interviews for them as recruitment agencies and employers discriminated against them for being out of work.
If no one will offer you an inteview because you're unemployed ......... HOW can you get a job ?
If you have many years experience in a job or if you have many years experience of dealing with people etc etc but your out of work that doesn't mean those skills are dead, they are still there waiting to be re-used.
But most recruitment agencies and employers use phrases like "recent, current or up to date " experience in their adverts as code words to discriminate against the unemployed because if you're out of work HOW can you get "recent, current or up to date" experience ?
You can't so due to your unemployement you're denied jobs you have the skills for......
The dole office senior management and James Purnell MP don't believe this happens and don't do anything to stop it.
Yet in the "real" world discrimination against the unemployed happens every day.
A simple excersise would be to send out 10 different CVs to the same firms but alter your personal details and time out of work and then see what happens.
Your CV with you in work will mean you will get interviews but your CV with you out of work for 12 months or more = reject letter or no reply.
Only way unemployment will go down is if discrimination against the unemployed is stopped and every one are allowed work.
oh dear that'll we do,
haven't a clue,
haven't a clue,
I know, we'll have a review
Blame the British Government, it is NOT the same, is it??
Good way to keeping the riff-raff off the streets, give them a job in government..
Better than digging holes and filling them up again - (Full Employment).
Who left the door open at the institution again?
As for the unemployment figures-well what did people expect to happen after Thatcher wrecked manufacturing,then this bunch of complete clowns took over under that reptile Blair,and then decided 'anything goes' when it came to producing their phony economy.
They-Labour/conservative/laughable democrats..it matters not
same sh**t-different flies.
I shall proudly be voting BNP,since no-one else seems to give a monkeys about me or my kind in this dog-dirt country.
Personally I hope unemployment goes up to ten million
Perhaps the pathetic supine British will then consider doing something radical,instead of weeping into their cornflakes.
BNP would be right. You and the rest of them should book in for some anger management me thinks.
However, the discovery and exploitation of North Sea oil and gas gave Britain a second chance at prosperity. Rather than invest the proceeds in creating a sustanable economy, politicains promoted an orgy of consumption and anihilated much of the productive economy by shifting large sectors overseas, where better short term profits could be made on the back of cheap labour.
Now Britain has an economy which is overly dependent on the service sector and is suffering declining oil extraction: like many other nations that have taken the same disastrous path, it is increasingly dependent on energy imports it has increasing difficulty paying for (Ukraine is the poster child for this kind of idiocy).
Unless there is a total rethink of the way the economy works and people are encouraged to occupy themselves doing things which are actually useful (as opposed to entertaining themselves or eating themselves to death), the situation will get much worse.
I suspect the chance of a total rethink by any of the major political parties is close to zero, since they are all dominated by redundant ideologies that are completely disconnected from reality.