The report looks to dispel alarmist reactions to the downturn, or what it terms:

...the Chicken Little/Daily Mail response - [that] we are already in the middle of the worst recession of all time, the sky is about to fall in.

Looking at latest unemployment data, the TUC argues that:

In fact, the unemployment rate is still quite low by the standard of the early 90s recession and the redundancy rate is still no higher than it was five years ago.

But before we start getting too optimstic, it goes on to point out that unemployment is of course what economists term a "lagging indicator" (helpfully defined by Wikipedia (external website) - at least at the time of writing - as "an economic indicator that reacts slowly to economic changes, and therefore has little predictive value").

The rapid acceleration in unemployment rates seen over recent months has already considerably exceeded the rate forecast by all but the most pessimistic of economic commentators. This means that as the recent widespread job cuts seen over the past few months come to be reflected in unemployment data, a further sharp deterioration can be expected.

As the TUC notes:

...the scale of the recession and the speed at which it has progressed has caught economists by surprise. [...] [T]he picture is going to get a lot worse before it gets any better.

Even with the above cautionary provisos about the reliability of such forecasts, the report concludes that unemployment could well rise from its current level of 5.8% (subscription required) to reach 8% in the near future, with the unemployment level topping 2.5 million during 2009.

So, as they used to say in 1950s Hollywood (external website, about six minutes in): "Keep watching the skies."