Number of JSA claimants soars

According to recent figures the number of people that are now seeking Jobseeker’s Allowance has soared, going up to 1.64 million in January. This reflected an increase of 23,500.

In the last quarter there was an increase in long term unemployment levels, with numbers going up by 37,000 taking the total to 663,000. A report claims that one in five of the adult population of working age in the UK is now classed as ‘economically inactive’.

The number of people that are classed as inactive hit an all time high of close to nine million. Over two and a half million of these claim to be too ill to work or they are disabled and they are claiming incapacity benefit.

This figure has trebled since 1979. There was a slight fall in the number of people that were classed as officially unemployed, including people that were not claiming JSA, with the figure coming in at 2.46 million.

There are concerns that the level of unemployment will rise again next month, as many people that were given work on a temporary basis over the Christmas and New Year period will find themselves out of work again.

Yvette Cooper, the Work and Pensions Secretary, said that people should expect more bad news, as the numbers were likely to continue rising until around the summer.

The shadow Work and Pensions Secretary claimed that the figures were shocking. She stated: ‘The continued growth in the number of long-term unemployed shows that Labour is failing to support the people who need help the most.

Unless Ministers wake up and stop treating these people like a statistic we risk losing a generation to a culture of worklessness. The human and economic cost of this failure will be severe. Equally disturbing is the fact we have records levels of economic inactivity. One in five people of working age you now meet won’t be employed.’

Tags: uk, failure, Bad news, time, summer