James Forsyth James Forsyth

Unemployment rate highest in 15 years

Today’s unemployment figures do not make for cheery reading. Youth unemployment is up to over a million and unemployment overall has reached 2.62 million, meaning that the unemployment rate is the highest it has been for 15 years. Laura Kuenssberg tweets one particularly striking statistic:

‘Number of UK Nationals in work fell 280k compared to this time last year, number of non-UK Nationals in work increased 147k over same time’

This suggests that it’s a touch too simple just to say that there are no jobs out there. It also means that we really should think about why non-UK nationals are proving so much more adept at finding work than their British counterparts.

The combination of the Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Gove reform programmes will go a long way to solving this problem in the medium term. But the question is: what can be done in the short term to make British workers both more attractive to employers and better at seeking out opportunities?

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