‘Dire’ official jobs figures mean that the new government needs to take swift and decisive action to get Britain working again, according to a prominent HR body.
Data from the Office of National Statistics indicated that the number of people out of work in the three months to March rose by 53,000 to 2.51 million – the highest level since December 1994 when the last Conservative government was in power.
The situation was particularly bad among 16-to-24 year olds, which saw 18,000 more people being added to the statistics, bringing the total number of unemployed in this category to 941,000. The number of over-50s who have been out of work for more than a year also grew by 12,000 to 146,000.
But there was also an increase in the amount of people classed as economically inactive – those either not in work or not seeking employment. Figures here rose by nearly 100,000 to a record total of just under 8.2 million. An additional 25,000 were likewise working part-time due to a failure to find full-time work, bringing the total in this category to 1.1 million.
To make matters worse, there was an increase in redundancies and a fall in job vacancies, although the total number of people claiming unemployment benefit fell by 27,000 to 1.52 million in April – a sharper fall than the 20,000 expected. The rate of overall unemployment also remained static at 8%.
But John Philpott, chief economic advisor at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, said: “If David Cameron’s incoming coalition government wanted reminding about the economic policy challenge that lies ahead, Conservative and Liberal Democrat ministers need look no further that today’s dire official jobs figures.”
They sent a “clear SOS message on the state of the UK labour market”, he added, which posed equally serious a challenge to the country as the severe fiscal crisis.
“How to combine the critically important task of cutting the fiscal deficit with meeting the equally important challenge of restoring full employment will provide Mr Cameron and his coalition partners with their sternest test. The rhetoric of ‘getting Britain working again’ is about to meet reality,” Philpott said.
