Wednesday, Jan 20, 2010
Unemployment soars by 21.2%
Times: UK unemployment falls for first time since 2008
However, the improvement masked a rise in the number of people in the labour force who are neither working nor looking for work, with the inactivity rate rising to 21.2 per cent in the three months to November, the highest since the three months to August 2007.
The number of people who were economically inactive rose to 8.046 million - the highest since records began in 1971.
Posted by waitingtobuy @ 11:32 AM (1540 views) Add Comment
17 Comments
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1. hpwatcher said...
I'm not surprised at all; I see this as an effect of the mini boom created and fed by the Labour government as the country heads towards a general election.
2. matt_the_hat said...
Corus closes but Tesco opens a new store!
3. refusetobuy said...
Don't forget that a part-timer counts as employed, so switches from full to part time don't get picked up in the stats
4. bystander said...
Does this not represent the part-timers hired to cope with Christmas and new year sales??? Or am I simplifying the mysteries of statistics too much.
5. stillthinking said...
People with working partners who earn more than 200 pounds a month get knocked out of the stats, contractors knocked out for 6 months, similarly for those worked outside of the UK within the last 4 years (meant to be two but its a fiddle !), savings over 16K (all FTBs and others).
A pretty hefty chunk will not receive the unemployment insurance they have paid for, quite aside from being the only insurance policy in existence which pays out less than it costs.
6. matt_the_hat said...
5. stillthinking - I agree, I was thinking about taking out unemployment insurance for 66% of my net salary - but will this mean that I would not receive JSA in the event of losing my job and therefore I would be paying for insurance that I could not claim against.
7. need-a-crash said...
Unemploment down, house prices up, banks recovering, healthy 3% inflation, gdp +ve again... Looks like we really are back to BAU!
Next we'll be hearing that Gordo Brown is ahead in the polls!
8. stillthinking said...
JSA is pants. A derisory amount in comparison to national insurance.
A more realistic appraisal of NI contributions in the UK might conclude that they were solely insurance for your landlord or mortgage provider (being the main beneficiaries).
9. stillthinking said...
Sorry, correction
JSA is pants denied, a small wooden spoon of sh*t slurry normally stolen away from your mouth.
10. mark wadsworth said...
@ MTH, don't forget that part of the reason why the Indian owners shut down Corus was because it was more profitable to sell off the carbon dioxide permits than to run the plant.
11. jack c said...
mark wadsworth - can u expand upon the carbon permits for me please (or provide a link with a bit more detail)
12. Yorkshire_lad said...
In the Yorkshire region unemployment is up, with Hull leading the unemployment tables
13. matt_the_hat said...
10. mark wadsworth - it all comes down to a simple question like - why should taxi drivers in Barnsley get paid more than those in Bangkok.
50 years ago the answer would have been because the UK made things the rest of the world wanted to buy (demand for sterling) now when Corus and the like are shutting I don't know the answer.
14. seanb303 said...
Wall Street and Governments Love Carbon Credits--Don't You?
http://www.oftwominds.com/blogjan10/carbon-trading01-10.html
15. fjcruiser said...
young unemployed are put on useless training schemes so thousands have been removed from the stat
after 6 months benefits stops for most (become means testeds after 6 months) so these unemployed stop clocking.
long term unemployment (above a year) has doubled in 2009 and is increasing
we are moving towards structural unemployment far more difficult to deal with.
so these stats are completely flawed.
16. jack c said...
To add to the above if you consider how many people are on benefits of one kind or another (follow this link www.ifaonline.co.uk/digital_assets/32/Cover_Statistics.pdf) then the unemployment rate is currently running at around 18%
17. Mr Cobblepot said...
Hmmm, I wonder how many people are like myself. I worked for 30 years non stop, paid my taxes, then I got made redundant, my job was moved to india. I don't bother signing on for job seekers allowance, because all I'd get is a pension stamp (value £7.50 a week - no other benefits) and seeing as I'm only 47 the chances are I would die long before I would get the state pension (pension age will probably be around 70-72 by the time I'm supposed to retire).
I did until recently sign on for the pensions stamp just so I would be counted as part of the unemployed list, but when you take the above into consideration and the fact that the jobcentre made me jump through hoops for £7.50, I thought... no way!!!
Have lived the last 2 years using my savings that took 30 years to accumulate.
I reckon there maybe quite a few more people in the same position. The system is geared in such a way that we aren't included in the unemployment figures.