Unemployment Still On The Rise

Unemployment in the UK continued to rise by 48,000 to 2.67 million, this in the months prior to and including December 2011.

This makes the unemployment rate at 8.4%, which is the highest for the past 16 years!

The number of unemployed young people, ages 16 to 24 rose by 22,000 to 1.04 million.  This makes the unemployment rate for young people to now be at 22.2%.

Also, the number of people seeking JSA, job seekers allowance increased in January by 6,900 to 1.6 million.

These are not good numbers or figures to see.  Of course there can be many reasons why these numbers have increased, especially leading up to the end of the year.

Oddly enough, the figures I viewed shows that while unemployment rose, so did the number of people working.

The employment rate rose by 0.1% in December, to 70.3%.   This equates to 60,000 more people were in work in the last three (3) months to a total of 29,130,000.

Don’t all these numbers give you a headache?  They do me.

But we need to monitor these things as they are a force that drives our economy and also helps us better understand what is happening in our little piece of the world.