Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Unemployment highest for nearly 10 years

The Government was hit by a fresh bout of bad economic news today when unemployment reached its worst level for almost a decade.

There were 1.72 million people out of work in the three months to July, up by 81,000 from the previous quarter and the highest total since the spring of 1999.

The number of people claiming jobseeker's allowance rose for the seventh month in a row in August, by 32,500 to 904,900 - the biggest monthly hike since December 1992.
The Office for National Statistics said the trend on both the claimant count and the wider number of jobless was increasing.

The number of workers in manufacturing continued to fall, down by 42,000 in the latest quarter to 2.87 million, the lowest since records began 30 years ago.
There was also the first fall for more than a year in the UK's employment level, down by 16,000 to 29.54 million in the three months to July.

Today's data showed that the number of workers in the public sector in June was 5.77 million, up by 13,000 over the quarter, while private sector employment was down by 29,000 to 23.77 million.

Vacancies were also down to their lowest level for more than a year to 613,200 after a fall of 56,900 in the quarter to August.

Economic inactivity also rose, with the number of people on long-term sick leave, looking after a relative, students or who have given up looking for a job up by 4,000 to 7.86 million - 20 per cent of the working age population.
Average earnings increased by 3.5 per cent in the year to July, up by 0.1 per cent from the previous month.

Wages grew by 3.3 per cent in the public sector compared with 3.5 per cent in private firms.
The number of days lost through industrial disputes in July was 363,000, the highest monthly total for more than two years, largely as a result of strikes by local government workers.
The annual total to July was 1.1 million, almost double the figure for the previous year.

Full-time and part-time employment levels fell back in the latest quarter, although the figures also showed an increase in the total number of jobs in the UK, up by 26,000 to 31.68 million.
Around 138,000 people were made redundant in the three months to July, up by 28,000 from the previous quarter - the highest figure for over a year.

The TUC warned today that the number of people out of work for at least a year could almost double to 700,000 by the end of 2009.

The union organisation said total unemployment could hit two million by next year, partly as a result of the Government's tougher benefits regime.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/unemployment-highest-for-nearly-10-years-933360.html


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5 comments:

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Anonymous said...

Why are we supprised.

Remember the Tory party election broadcasts of 1983:

"Every Labour government there has ever been has increased unemployment"

I heard Neil Kinnock being interviewed on BBC radio and reluctantly admitting this was true. However, this admission was not used by the Tory party in the 1992 election campaign.

The reason for this is simple.

Labour increases taxes.

It increases the amount of money spent by the state - the unproductive sector - by decreasing the amount spent by private individuals - the productive sector.

Even when the state owns abnd operates productive industries, they tend to be less efficient than those run by the private sector, for the basic reason that the civil servants running those industries will not be hurt by any losses, nor benefit from any profit, nor promoted by shareholders for doing a good job, nor demoted by shareholders or boardroom rivals for failure.

Making the economy as a whole less productive/efficient never was a good way to solve poverty...but Labour and all other leftists assert that increasing taxes is the ONLY way to solve poverty.

Taxes are inherently and inevitably inefficient, because an army of civil servants must be employed to collect, administer and spend those taxes, before any production can be gained. This is an extra overhead.

Taxes must be collected to pay for common goods, such as roads, police, defence etc. But the level of taxes required for this is much lower than governments (Tory and Labour) ever admit.

It is no accident that the USA is still the most productive society in the world, yet its government collects and spends little more than 30% of national income in taxation. The UK government spends over 45%.

How wealth can be distributed better is another matter. But increasing taxation so that unaccountable busy bodies can decide how to spend it is NOT a good way of distributing wealth.

Bill Jax

ENGLISHMAN said...

"economic inactivity"can not "rise",if you are inactive then you do nothing,you can not make a negative a positive,it seems that you are well on the way to "situational ethics" with such nonsense.

Anonymous said...

It was worked out by an economist in the 1970's [his report was quickly buried], that the true rate of taxation for the UK should by between 5-10%. That's all-in, no stealth taxes.

He commented that that would provide a full NHS, and would even allow for the armed forces to be increased in size.

What it would require however would be kicking out all the immigrants and ruthlessly slashing a bloated and corrupt local and central government.

Anonymous said...

So, the crash [read PLANNED DECONSTRUCTION] comes, just as John Tyndall and others predicted it would.

And just when any organisation or group that might have been able to capitalise on it has been penetrated and wrecked ...