Unemployment soared by 220,000 over the three months to June, official figures have revealed.
This takes the total number of people unemployed to 2.43 million, the highest level since 1995, according to data released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). This means the jobless rate is now 7.8%, higher than the expected 7.7%, and up from 7.6% over the three months to May.
Dr John Philpott, chief economist at the CIPD, said the ONS figures point to "a labour market in deepening distress". He added: "The situation would be less depressing if we could comfort ourselves with the prospect of a swift return to strong economic growth. But if the Bank of England is correct this is not on the cards. The best our weak jobs market can look forward to in the near term is an anaemic recovery. And at worst, as the CIPD warned earlier this week, an anaemic recovery might well trigger a further avalanche of redundancies later this year."
Graduates and young people are faring particularly badly – the rate of unemployment among 18-24 year-olds was 17.2% over the three months to June, which is up from 12.5% over the same period a year ago.
General secretary of the TUC, Brendan Barber, remarked that today’s figures show that we are still some way off recovery.
"With over one in six young people out of work, unemployment is already at crisis level. The government must do more to get people back into work, otherwise we risk losing another generation of young people to mass unemployment."
There were 427,000 job vacancies in the three months to July, which is the lowest figure since comparable records began in 2001, and is down 26,000 over the previous quarter and down 203,000 over the year.
One Response
Can’t trust official figures the real figure is over 4.5 million
I see HR magazine (http://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/News/MostRead/927212/real-unemployment-figure-above-45-million-says-CIPD/?goback=.nvr_106184_2 ) is quoting the CIPD as saying the true unemployment figure is way over 4.5 million, is this hardly surprising? One of the tricks of the DWP (Department of Work and Pensions) is to massage the figures is to push those who have been unemployed for six months or more onto “New Deal” training, where they are officially no longer unemployed (although are receiving benefits).
Biggest problem with New Deal is it doesn’t work, as there is pressure little training involved and there is too much emphasis on the end goal (finding employment) rather than how to get there, consequence is that it is nothing more than a glorified jobclub with trainees sitting around looking at week old newspapers with few jobs in or looking at the ever decreasing number of job vacancies on the internet.