Unemployment Statistics: When Less is More

Today it was announced that the quarterly unemployment figures showed a fall of 33,000 to 2.45 million. (See BBC Here) and (New Statesman Here)

So why is this not good news?

Unfortunately there are several sad but straight forward reasons.

1.The number actually in work fell by even more (54,000).
2.99,000 students left the labour market and so were excluded from the figures
3.The number of long term unemployed continued its relentless rise to 687,000
4.A massive 90,000 jobs have been rapidly “created” in the public sector


The bottom line is that 147,000 people left the labour market. 99000 went into further education and the rest just stopped bothering. On top of this the figures are further distorted by an extra 90,000 jobs magically created in the public sector. Many of these will be short term and are unlikely to last long after the election, whoever wins.

Read This Blogger Here and get an idea of the cynical manipulation of the statistics by the use of careful wording to define who gets included and who gets excluded from the jobless figures.

It would be really great if this country started to pull itself out of the mire. But until things change and we start building real employment and not just manufacturing extra fake jobs in the public sector or forcing kids into 3 more years living off their parents, we are going to go downhill.

We need honest politicians not spin doctors. We also need to be told the truth about how bad things are. Until we know the truth about how bad unemployment is, and what we need to do to remedy the problem, things will not improve.