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Unemployment Soars As The Job Centre Feels The Impact
By Philip | October 19, 2008
The UK unemployment numbers are in for August and it isn’t good. Another 164,000 people lost their jobs over the three month period before August. This rise is the largest increase seen in 17 years. This makes the number of unemployed people 1.79 million. That is a rate of 5.7% compared to the 5.2% from the quarter before. Another 31,800 sought Jobseeker’s Allowance in September according to the Office for National Statistics. This brings their total to 939,000 for September.
The evidence seems to indicate a general slowdown. More people are out of work and the total number of job vacancies is down. Average annual earnings growth is down to 3.4% for the lowest rate in 5 years. This also suggests that the rising inflation rates aren’t being accompanied by equivalent pay raises. To counter these trends, the government plans to issue £100m to provide additional training for unemployed workers.
The numbers are expected to only get worse as time goes on though. Some economists expect the number to hit 2 million before Christmas. Capital Economics even made a forecast that there would be 3 million out of work by Christmas in 2010. With such an increase it is going to prove a very busy time indeed for the job centre and all of it’s branches.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown has issued numerous statements promising that the government would do all it could to stop the growing unemployment numbers and reduce redundancies in the workplace. Jenny Willott, the Liberal Democrat in charge of Shadow Work and Pensions blames this current trend on prior mismanagement though.
“The effects of the banking crisis have filtered down to the real economy and are affecting people across the county.” She added that new government action must be taken immediately to aid the average worker now that the rescue plan for banking is secure.
The worst part may be that these figures don’t show the negative impact of the bank crashes. TUC general secretary, Brendan Barber, stated that tough times are ahead. Years of full employment will make the coming crisis particularly hard for many, with government aid desperately needed to prepare them to re-enter the job market as quickly as possible.
The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development shares this sentiment. Recent surveys from the organisation suggest that things will only get worse. Their latest results indicate that redundancies are increasing while general recruitment in decreasing.
John Philpott, the institute’s chief economist, warns that, “We’ll see hundreds of thousands of jobs being lost, and unemployment is likely to rise, certainly above two million. The question is how much further than that.”
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