The headline unemployment rate has held firm at 7.8% (subscription required), according to latest official unemployment data published today (Wednesday 20 January 2010).
Today's unemployment data show the following:
- The headline unemployment rate (on the ILO definition) stood at 7.8% over the period September to November 2009. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) reports that this figure is unchanged when compared with the rate for the three months to August 2009, which also ran at 7.8%.
- The ILO unemployment level was 2.46 million over the period September to November 2009, which the ONS reports is down 7,000 on the previous quarter. The ONS notes: "This is the first quarterly fall in the number of unemployed people since the three months to May 2008."
Recent months have been characterised by a slackening off in the rate of unemployment, culminating in today's data, which appear to show it stalling.
However, this trend could well peter out in the near future, according to economist and former Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) member David Blanchflower. Blanchflower warns that the wave of public spending cuts that could follow the 2010 general election would result in a signficant rise in unemployment (external website), which could in turn reverse the UK's fragile economic recovery. As Blanchflower puts it:
At the moment unemployment looks like it has stalled, but it's not stalled for long. If a new government got in and started cutting public spending it could rise to four or five million. It would be the economics of lunacy to cut public spending any time soon - certainly 2010 and maybe in 2011. We'd have a double-dip recession, maybe even a triple dip.
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