Jobless rise is largest in decades

Unemployment posted the largest quarterly increase since comparable records began almost 40 years ago, according to official data.

Under the Labour Force Survey count, it rose by 281,000 in the three months to May to stand at 2.38 million.

The rise in the number of unemployed also pushed the unemployment rate up by 0.9 percentage points to 7.6% of the working population — the largest quarterly increase since 1981.

Young people — 18 to 24 years old — have been particularly hard hit with unemployment leaping to a 16-year high of 726,000, and the unemployment rate for this age group now stands at 17.3%.

And in the short term this can only get worse as school and college leavers start looking for work. More worryingly, one in five of this age group — 133,000 — have been unemployed for more than a year. TUC general secretary Brendan Barber described the figures as “horrendous” and said the government must do all it can to tackle joblessnes and “the permanent scar of long-term unemployment.”

The claimant count, which only measures the number of people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance, rose by 23,800 to 1.56 million in June 2009.

It was last higher in June 1997. The unemployment rate of 4.8% last reached such a high in November 1997.