Paying the price

Yet, while this bodes well for the longer term as the coalition looks to rebalance the economy, it offers scant consolation to those who have the misfortune to find themselves out of the work.

The jobless rate has now reached a 17-year high, despite Employment Minister Chris Grayling describing yesterday’s figures as “encouraging”, and Yorkshire, once again, finding itself with the third highest unemployment rate in the country behind London and the North East.

The challenge facing the Government ahead of next week’s Budget is creating a set of policies that accelerate the creation of new jobs. There’s little point having a welfare revolution, one that most voters support, if there are insufficient vacancies.

Furthermore, these figures reveal how women and young people are paying the heaviest price – more than a million people in each category are on the dole queue. They will not have been reassured by Mr Grayling’s complacent comments.

What they would like to see is radical plans to encourage more small businesses to be created, and a renewed attempt to ensure well-intended policies like enterprise zones actually deliver specific targets rather than becoming bogged down in an increasingly convoluted regional policy involving local enterprise partnerships, city mayors and so forth. For, unless these structures deliver immediate results, and the jury is still out on their likely effectiveness, there is a very realistic prospect that the spectre of unemployment will confront even more families in Yorkshire in the months ahead.