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Doomed

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    Doomed

    Upturn over?

    Jobless claimant count up for 1st time since January

    (Reuters) - The number of Britons claiming unemployment benefit rose last month for the first time since January but there was a record rise in the number of people in work in the three months to July.

    The Office for National Statistics said the number of people claiming jobless benefit rose by 2,300 in August after a smaller than initially estimated fall of 1,000 in July. That was the first rise since January and confounded analysts' forecasts for a fall of 3,000.

    The mixed report is unlikely to alter policymakers' view that country's recovery from recession is fragile and will be vulnerable to the deep public spending cuts due to be revealed next month.

    The pound fell after the figures, which some analysts said could prove to be a turning point after the improvement seen in the first half of the year.

    "This is a classically mixed report," said George Buckley, UK economist at Deutsche Bank. "With the claimant count rising that does pose the risk that we get a second leg down."

    The number of people without a job on the wider ILO measure fell by 8,000 in the three months to July to 2.467 million, the smallest fall since the three months to April. That left the jobless rate at 7.8 percent, as expected.

    The number of people in work rose by 286,000, the biggest quarterly rise since records began in 1971, although that was mainly due to a 166,000 rise in the number of part-time workers.

    The improvement could be short-lived once government spending cuts kick in. The independent Office for Budget Responsibility has estimated that more than half a million public sector workers could lose their jobs over the next five years.

    The squeeze on the public purse is already having some impact. The number of people employed in the public sector fell by 22,000 in the three months to June, the second quarterly fall.

    "The labour market may have reached some sort of turning point, even before the public sector job cuts start in earnest," said Vicky Redwood at Capital Economics.

    Average weekly earnings growth including bonuses rose by 1.5 percent in the three months to July, up from a 1.1 percent rise in the three months to June but below analysts forecasts for a reading of 1.7 percent.

    That should reassure Bank of England policymakers that above target inflation is not seeping into wage demands. Data on Tuesday showed inflation held steady at 3.1 percent in August, confounding expectations of a fall.

    #2
    Its interesting though how BBC are slightly more optimistic.

    UK unemployment falls to 2.47 million

    and then they mention the rise in claimants as a side note.

    Comment


      #3
      Real cuts are yet to start - just wait till they deal with other benefit claimants, the only reason that won't bump up unemployment count massively is if the Govt will refuse paying it after X months and refusal to take *any* job.

      FFS, in USA they announced they will build 240,000 km of roads and 6000 km of railways, it's not rockets science to teach people take part in construction industry.

      Comment


        #4
        Doom you say?

        Not if I have anything to do with it. You just wait and see, Christmas 2010 will be one to remember.

        Comment


          #5
          I concur with the thoughts on this thread about we have yet to see the big rise in unemployment numbers. However if you were to count the PRODUCTIVE jobs in the UK (the ones which can earn the UK money) then I reckon unemployment would have been far higher in recent years, because Labour stuffed the public sector with non-jobs to keep the unemployment figures down.

          I don't know how high the published unemployment figure will go. 3m easily within the next 12 months. But do they have the political balls to allow it to go over 4m?

          We need to stop pretending about unemployment. It's based upon a fictitious figure using the number of job seeker allowance claimants. It would be way better to measure those who are actually not paying their NI stamp currently, but who would normally be capable of doing so (you can't include pensioners or seriously disabled in this number, but the layabouts would certainly be in there).

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