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Unemployment up – and set to keep on rising
MINISTERS say unemployment will continue to rise after hitting a 14-year high of 2.47 million.
Another 210,000 joined the jobless tally across the country in the three months to July, with 24,000 people losing their jobs in Yorkshire and the Humber.
It means there are now 235,000 people in the region – 8.9 per cent of the potential workforce – out of work, an increase of 72,000 over the past 12 months as employers have shed jobs or been forced out of business, although the rate of increase is slowing.
Unemployment among 18 to 24 year olds in Yorkshire is also at a 10-year high of 49,580. Ministers have promised not to abandon a generation of young people.
Yesterday Employment Minister Jim Knight said that although there are "fragile" signs of an improvement in the economy it is likely to be some time before unemployment starts to fall.
"I would predict that would continue for some months yet, in common with the orthodox view that as we have just got the first, perhaps fragile, signs of recovery, growth in jobs follows on some way behind," said Mr Knight. "It's probably a fair prediction we'll see further growth in unemployment.
"We're straining every sinew to prevent long-term youth unemployment on the scale we've had before because we know the scarring effect it can have."
Yesterday's official figures showed the national jobless total is at its highest level since May 1995, with the unemployment rate now at 7.9 per cent – up 0.7 per cent on the previous three months.
In Yorkshire and the Humber, unemployment rose 11.4 per cent in the three months to July, according to the Office for National Statistics; 235,000 people in the region were out of work – up 24,000 on the previous quarter.
Mr Knight said that the number of new claims for Jobseekers' Allowance in the region was falling and up to 1,811 minimum- wage six-month jobs will be created for young people and long-term unemployed with the help of Government funding. He insisted they were "real jobs".
Conservative leader David Cameron said: "It's extremely depressing that we are getting to a point of 2.5 million people unemployed.
"What we need to do is make sure our welfare system is working in every way it can to help people get jobs, to help people get back into work, to give them the training that they need."
TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: "This is not the time to take risks with policies that could make unemployment worse. It might look rosier in City dealing rooms but out in the real world unemployment is the number one issue."
British Chambers of Commerce chief economist David Kern said the unemployment increase was marginally smaller than feared, but the figures were consistent with its assessment that unemployment would go above three million next year.
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Weather for Yorkshire
Saturday 26 May 2012
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