The latest employment figures are the grimmest for some time. Unemployment has risen to 2.62m (8.3 per cent), up 129,000 (0.4 per cent) on the quarter (the largest quarterly increase since July 2009) and the highest level since 1994.
Meanwhile, youth unemployment has passed the symbolic million mark. There are now 1.02m (21.9 per cent) 16-24 year olds out of work, 67,000 (1.7 per cent) more than in the previous quarter and the highest number since comparable records began in 1992. UK youth unemployment is now above the EU average of 21.4 per cent and the eurozone average of 21.2 per cent. For the record, the total includes 286,000 people in full-time education who were looking for part-time work. But Chris Grayling is deluded if he thinks that youth unemployment of 730,000 is something to boast about. The danger of a lost generation is increasing every month.
Ministers are right to point out that high youth unemployment is a long-standing problem but their policies have made a bad situation worse. Since it came to power, the coalition has scrapped the Future Jobs Fund (described by Frank Field, the government’s poverty adviser, as “one of the most precious things the last government was involved in”), abolished the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) and announced that it will offer 10,000 fewer university places next year. All measures that have exacerbated the jobs crisis.
And worse could be to come. George Osborne promised that private-sector job creation would “far outweigh” the job losses in the public-sector but few now believe him. The ONS didn’t publish new figures on public and private sector employment this month but September’s bulletin showed that while 264,000 private-sector jobs have been created over the last year, 240,000 public-sector jobs have been lost, a net gain of just 24,000 jobs. Worse, over the quarter, 111,000 public-sector jobs were lost, while just 41,000 private-sector jobs were created, suggesting that the labour market is beginning to stagnate.
Osborne, who has already been forced to announce an extra £44.4bn of borrowing due to lower tax revenues and higher welfare payments, will find it ever harder to reduce the deficit as unemployment continues to rise. As the self-defeating nature of austerity becomes clear, the pressure for a change of course will become even greater.
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