As the Guardian has noted:
UK unemployment has risen back over the 2.5 million mark, fanning fears that Britain is suffering a "jobless recovery".
The number of people out of work in Britain rose by 35,000 in the three months to October, pushing the unemployment total up to 2,502,000. This raised the UK's unemployment rate to 7.9%, from 7.8% in the previous quarter, the highest rate in six months.
City economists had expected a 15,000 drop in the number of people out of work, which would have lowered the unemployment rate to 7.7%.
The rise was mainly due to a drop in public sector employment, where 33,000 jobs were lost over the period.
Those economists are wrong. They assume that a retreating public sector will promote private sector growth. It doesn’t. It means private sector stagnation or worse.
And those who worry about a jobless recovery are also wrong.
A recovery without jobs is not a recovery.
And we’re not going to get new jobs. The government is guaranteeing that will be the case. And we’re just seeing the first signs of it.
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So is it that 2.5 million people are lazy, incompetent or have they been failed by this country and the policies of outsourcing as many jobs as possible for the benefits of the few already massively wealthy majority shareholders?
Whether or not sending 50% of people to uni is in the country’s best interest, it did do a great job of kicking the unemployment rate can down the road.
I think it is fair to assume that rising university fees will reduce the number of people who go, which will raise unemployment.
The austerity cuts will result in many redundancies raising unemployment.
Cuts in benefits will encourage more people to look for work. So what happens to wages when at least 2.5 million people all start competing for the remaining jobs? Well if you own a business and have employees, in the short term it’s going to make you very happy. You get to cut wages and make your employees work harder and longer hours without overtime as they know they are easily replaceable. If you are one of the people who are in a job that is easily replaceable things are about to get a lot worse for you. The wealth disparity is about to ratchet up another notch.
@ AdTheNad
And let’s wait and see what happens to the Minimum Wage……
@SB Good point. I had always thought that they’d leave it to wither but there are lots of Tories out there, including my MP Chope, who would love to get rid of the minimum wage altogether.
@Carol Wilcox
And if you can ramp up inflation high enough through manipulating the figures you can effectively reduce the minimum wage without even having to worry about those pesky headlines.