No 113: Now some bad!

IMPORTANT new economic figures announced in the past few days.

Today, new unemployment statistics showed a rise in the LFS to 2.5 million out of work, or 8% of the workforce. This is the highest since 1996.

This may not be as bad as it looks. Often, unemployment is "lagged", that is, it increases or decreases more slowly than other indicators such as GDP, due to the time taken for changes in the economy to be reacted to by firms. Therefore, the rest of the economy may be in recovery while the unemployment figures reflect earlier recessionary conditions.

On the other hand, the Claimant Count decreased by 33,000. This, however, is probably not a sign of lower joblessness but of people stopping looking for work -that is, becoming economically inactive. It seems though that a lot of these are becoming students, which, as you know, may mean future private and external benefits.

We must acknowledge that the new unemployment figures are serious, and damaging to a Labour government looking to get re-elected. Their response would proabably be that we have suffered the worst global economic crisis since 1929, and unemployment is still not as bad as it was during the recessions of both the early 1980s and 1990s. Whether recent policies have helped with this, is another question to be debated.

NOTICE MY FRIENDS THAT THIS POST CONTAINS MORE EVALUATION THAN I SEE IN A YEAR OF SOME STUDENTS' ESSAYS.

HOPE YOU CAN LEARN FROM IT!