Latest figures reveal rise in UK unemployment

The Office of National Statistics (ONS) has reported that the number of unemployed people in the UK rose in the three months up to November last year.

The number of unemployed people in the UK is now 1.4 million, an increase of 13,000 on the last quarter.

Official figures showed that the employment rate for people of working age was 74.8% for the three-month period up to November 2004, an increase of 74.7% from the previous quarter.

However, the ONS reported that the trend in the unemployment rate has continued to fall and the claimaint count has also fallen. The figures revealed that the number of people employed increased by 99,000 during the quarter and by 271,000 throughout the year. This brought the total of people in work in the UK to 28.5 million, the highest level recorded since 1971.

The number of people claiming Jobseekers Allowance fell by 6,200 to 826, 300, the lowest figures since 1975.

However, the average number of job vacancies increased in the three months up to December 2004. The figure increased to 648,800, an increase of 4,400 on the previous quarter. The redundancy rate for the three months up to November remained virtually unchanged, however, at 5.8 per 1,000 employees.

Minister for Work, Jane Kennedy, welcomed the figures saying: "Today's figures show there are even more people in work, more than ever before. Over a quarter of a million more people in work in the last year alone and two million in the last eight years."

Ms Kennedy said that the figures showed that schemes such as Jobcentre Plus and the New Deals had helped contribute to the fall in long-term unemployment.

She added: "This month's figures are continuing evidence of the success of the government's economic and welfare to work policies. Getting more people into the labour market, alongside low unemployment, is a further step towards our aim of extending employment opportunity to all."

However, Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Daivd Willetts, criticised this, saying that the ONS statistics show that 1.11 million people under 25 are neither working nor in full-time education - an increase of 28,000 since May 1997.

Mr Willetts said: "These figures show how wrong ministers are to defend their bureaucratic employment programmes. There are now more young people who are neither working nor studying nor training than there were before the New Deal was introduced."

He said a "fresh approach" was needed to help unemployed people get back into work.

(KMcA/SP)