British Unemployment Over Two Million!

[Big Orange]

BBC

Unemployment passes two million

UK unemployment has risen above two million for the first time since 1997, official figures have shown.

During the three months to January, the number of people unemployed totalled 2.03 million, up by 165,000, said the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

For February, the number of people getting jobseeker's allowance added a record 138,400 to reach 1.39 million.

There are now 10 jobseekers for every vacancy advertised in UK jobcentres, the TUC claimed earlier this week

'Unemployment milestone'

The ONS added that the unemployment rate jumped to 6.5% between November and January.

Unemployment is rising as the first recession in the UK since 1991 continues to bite. Many economists now predict it will go above three million next year.

"This is another milestone in the return of mass unemployment to the UK, and it will get worse before it gets better as unemployment always persists even after a recovery starts," said TUC general secretary Brendan Barber.

Turning his attention to next month's G20 meeting in London, Mr Barber added that it was now imperative that world leaders work together to help stimulate the global economy.

David Kern, chief economist at the British Chambers of Commerce, said the government should now "seriously consider" temporary wage subsidies.

The ONS figures showed that it is the private sector that is seeing the rise in unemployment.

They showed that in December 2008, the number of people in private sector employment was 23.6 million, down 13,000 from September 2008.

Over the same period, the number of people with public sector jobs rose 15,000 to 5.78 million.

The ONS added that average earnings, including bonuses, rose only 1.8% in the year to January, the lowest annual rise since records began in 1991.

Political wrangle

Prime Minister Gordon Brown told the Commons that the government was continuing to do all it could to help the unemployed.

"The action we are taking now is designed to get us through this as quickly as possible," he said.

Mr Brown added that despite the rise in UK unemployment, it remained higher in other countries.

Conservative leader David Cameron countered that Mr Brown had led the UK to the current level of unemployment "without a hint of an apology, and the British people will never forgive him".

Business warnings

Separate reports by the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) and CBI have both predicted that UK unemployment will rise above three million in 2010.

The BCC said the UK economy had worsened "significantly" so far in 2009, and said unemployment will hit 3.2 million next year, slightly more than 10% of the workforce.

Alan Tomlinson, an accountant who guides firms through insolvency, said he had "never been so busy".

"Companies of all sizes and in all sectors are folding by the day, putting more and more people out of a job," he said.

"The CBI's prediction, last month, that unemployment will peak at just over three million in the second quarter of 2010 could prove to be wildly optimistic."

The International Monetary Fund predicted on Wednesday that the UK's recession would last longer than that of any of the world's other major economies.

It warned the UK would be the only member of the G7 group of leading industrial countries that would continue to see its economy contract in 2010.

It's the 1980s all over again - I'm not surprised this happening due to Britain's phony service economy being propped up by inflated property prices, overdrawn loans, and cannon fodder foreign labour. In the last thirty years we've been run into the ground by incompetent and selfish Kleptocrats.

[Dartzap]

For the love of anything, BO, stop using exclamation points in your thread titles, its makes you look sound like a sensationlist Mail minion

You are, however, correct about the incompetence of the people who have ran the country for the last 30 odd years or so. The next few years, should, in theory, mark the end of the Thatcherism that has pervaded the country ("Hey guyz, want to buy your council house even though you cant afford it and its going to fuck over ever single homeless person for the next twenty years? Awesome!) Heres hoping the next generation of social housing is as not so mistreated. I doubt it, sadly.

[Starglider]

("Hey guyz, want to buy your council house even though you cant afford it and its going to fuck over ever single homeless person for the next twenty years? Awesome!)

Selling it off to long-term occupiers would have been fine if the government had continued to build new council housing, or even subsidised the construction of low-cost housing by private firms. However Labour has been all talk and very little building, and during the property boom low-cost housing just wasn't marketable to investors the way trendy flats and McMansions were. That and the fact that the extreme difficultly of getting planning permission in the UK drove land prices up even faster than house prices (and guess what, land prices haven't fallen the way house prices have either), and compelled developers to build expensive homes to maintain profit margins.

[Big Orange]

New Labour did suck by mostly ignoring or actively continuing the inherent problems introduced by Thatcher, but Thatcher got the ball rolling in the first place by selling off the council housing her misgovernment was too callous and shortsighted to maintain. She was as bitter and twisted as Ayn Rand. And we can't keep pouring concrete when we're a relatively small island with claustrophobic urban areas hamstrung by the valuable Green Belt.

[Dartzap]

e're a relatively small island with claustrophobic urban areas hamstrung by the valuable Green Belt.Scot

Um, don't we only 'occupy' about 20% of the land anyway? There's plenty of space for new towns (Poudbury is a small example of this) Go up to the Scottish Highlands for example - 'Here Be Dragons' would be an appropriate mark on the map -miles and miles of unused, ugly as sin bracken, which serves no other purpose other to prove there's nothing for a hundred miles between Wick and Inverness. The lands there, it aint green, precious to the people, nor does it have rare highland ninja rabbits or flying foxes to protect. Its harder in England, admittedly,due to massive urbanisation due to the Industrial Revolution, but you can blame the Victorians for not having proper planning laws for that.

[Starglider]

New Labour did suck by mostly ignoring or actively continuing the inherent problems introduced by Thatcher, but Thatcher got the ball rolling in the first place by selling off the council housing her misgovernment was too callous and shortsighted to maintain.

Thatcher's right-wing economic and military policies were a necessary counterbalance to the extremely left-wing policies of the contemporary Labour government. Just look at Labour's 1983 manifesto; massive nationalisation, unilateral disarmament and withdrawal from all free trade organisations. Labour came close enough to ruining Britain in the late 70s, if Thatcher hadn't come to power they would have finished the job.

That said after a decade of Thatcher it was genuinely time for the pendulum to swing back a bit (and hopefully settle around the center). To start with 'New Labour' seemed to be exactly that, but unfortunately over time the 'Old Labour' socialists began to come out of the woodwork. They couldn't get away with renationalisation and Tony Blair's foreign adventurism put a crimp on their attempts to strangle the military, but they did manage to pump up public spending well beyond 'generous' and into 'wasteful'. Labour's view of private industry evolved from 'the enemy' to 'the cash cow that will be milked to support as big a public sector as possible', and unfortunately part of that evolution was losing much interest in regulating industry correctly.

And we can't keep pouring concrete when we're a relatively small island with claustrophobic urban areas hamstrung by the valuable Green Belt.

Even redevelopment of brownfield sites is hamstrung by planning regulations in the UK. The whole greenbelt notion is falling out of favour anyway, the original idea of 'containing' towns and preventing them merging really made very little sense in the first place. Better to allow towns to expand than to have housing developments scattered across the countryside and all the roads jammed with commuters.

[Lord Pounder]

e're a relatively small island with claustrophobic urban areas hamstrung by the valuable Green Belt.Scot

Um, don't we only 'occupy' about 20% of the land anyway? There's plenty of space for new towns (Poudbury is a small example of this) Go up to the Scottish Highlands for example - 'Here Be Dragons' would be an appropriate mark on the map -miles and miles of unused, ugly as sin bracken, which serves no other purpose other to prove there's nothing for a hundred miles between Wick and Inverness. The lands there, it aint green, precious to the people, nor does it have rare highland ninja rabbits or flying foxes to protect. Its harder in England, admittedly,due to massive urbanisation due to the Industrial Revolution, but you can blame the Victorians for not having proper planning laws for that.

But where are these people in the arse end of nowhere going to work? With all due respect dude this is not Field of Dreams, build it and they might not come.

[Dartzap]

With all due respect dude this is not Field of Dreams, build it and they might not come.

You are indeed quite correct - Inverness for example still has more job vacancies than bodies to fill them. In a recession....
Ah well, it was but a thought.