Why the government shouldn’t be confident that employment’s rising

No two ways about it: today’s employment figures are difficult for the coalition. The unemployment figure’s up for the seventh month in a row, and now stands at 2.68 million — the highest since 1994. And the unemployment rate — up to 8.4 per cent — is at its highest since 1995.

It doesn’t look like getting better anytime soon, either: unemployment’s predicted to carry on rising at least until the end of the year, possibly matching the three million peak of the early ‘90s.

In its defence, the government claims that employment is rising too. Today’s figure of 29.1 million in employment is about 150,000 higher than it was at the general election. That may seem odd — how come unemployment’s up when more people are employed? But you’ve got to bear in mind that the ‘economically active’ population has risen by around 360,000 in that time, so a small rise in employment is not enough to prevent unemployment rising.