Unemployment set to break two million barrier
Wednesday 18th March 2009, 8:30AM GMT.
More people are out of work than at any time since New Labour came to power, official figures are set to show this morning.
Data from the Office for National Statistics due out at 09:30 GMT is set to reveal that UK unemployment has exceeded two million for the first time since 1997.
The figures, for the three months to January, are expected to give an unemployment rate of 6.6 per cent and add 176,000 job losses to the 1.971 million jobless unveiled last month.
Analysts expect unemployment to peak at more than three million, by which time one in ten employable Britons would be out of work.
“Reports of companies laying off workers are prevalent, while an increasing number of companies are folding,” said Howard Archer, chief UK and European economist at IHS Global Insight
“With the economy seemingly set to contract through 2009 and very possibly beyond before starting to recover gradually, we expect unemployment to rise to a peak of 3.3 million [by late 2010/2011].”
John Philpott, chief economist at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, said recent job losses had been characterised by a “public sector-private sector divide”, describing the public sector as a “recession free zone”.
According to figures from the TUC, there are already ten jobseekers for every vacancy in the UK.
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