The People Bulletin

Following the recent uncertainty in Europe it probably comes as no surprise to many that unemployment has again risen for the last quarter with the current figure now standing at 2.62million. Youth unemployment has now reached the 1million mark, the first time since 1986 – in real terms this means that nearly 22% of young people under the age of 25 are now unemployed. As a result the government has come under increasing pressure to explain why and to deal with the rising levels of unemployment.

 Get the UK working

The CBI have called on the government to come up with a clear plan to get the UK working, with a particular focus on getting young people in to work.

John Cridland, CBI Director-General, said:

"These figures underline why we need urgent action to help our young people take their first steps in the labour market. A generation risks being scarred by the devastating effects of long-term unemployment.

"The Chancellor should use his autumn statement to announce a Young Britain Credit, worth £1500, to encourage firms to take on an unemployed 16 to 24 year-old.

"We also need further steps to reform the benefits system to make work really pay and to foster better links between businesses and schools to boost the attractiveness of young people in the labour market".

Long-term unemployed

Similarly, John Philpott, chief economic adviser at the CIPD felt that the any government policy should now focus not only on young unemployed people but more specifically those young people who have been unemployed for more than a year. Commenting on the figures he said:

“The UK is now clearly suffering a major jobs and pay crunch under the combined impact of tough fiscal policy medicine and very uncertain conditions in the global economy. The private sector is simply unable, at present to create enough jobs to offset public sector job cuts. At 2.6m in the three months to September, unemployment is already higher than consensus forecasts had expected for 2011 as a whole. With nothing to suggest a pick-up in the economy any time soon, unemployment is at best likely to peak at around 2.75 million next year. Were the economy to experience a double-dip recession unemployment could reach 3 million by 2014.

“While the rise in headline youth unemployment to 1.02 million is set to grab most attention the most worrying feature of these latest jobs figures is a quarterly fall of 305,000 in the number of employees (spilt roughly half and half between full-timers and part-timers), including almost 100,000 temps. Without a corresponding 100,000 increase in self-employment the overall jobs situation would thus look worse still.

“Also very worrying is the rise to 868,000 in the number of people unemployed and looking for work for more than a year, 30% of whom are aged 16-24. It is these long-term unemployed young people, rather than unemployed youths as a whole, who should be the prime target of Government policy measures.

“With growth in earnings also easing against a backdrop of still high price inflation, the jobs and pay crunch is clearly making this a miserable time for UK workers as well as the jobless, the anaemic ‘jobs-light/pay-tight’ recovery itself feeling just like a recession”.

Statistics

Other key figures included:

• The current jobless rate is now 8.3%.
• The number of people claiming JSA in October was 1.6million – a rise of 5,300.
• The rate of unemployment is highest in the North East (11.6%) and lowest in the South East (6.3%).
• The number of women unemployed is now 1.09million (a rise of 43,000) this is the highest it has been since February 1988.

See also: ‘From the Editor’ in The People Bulletin, 20 October 2011