Headline unemployment down ... but long term unemployment rising

JSA unemployment seems to have peaked. But long term unemployment is rising. Worse still, employment is also falling and economic inactivity is rising.

Today's labour market data showed:

• The JSA count fell by 32,300 (seasonally adjusted) between January and February 2010 to 1.59 million.
• The latest LFS unemployment figure is 2.45 million – and this represents a fall of 8,000 from the figure published last month.
• On the LFS measure, unemployment among 18 to 24-year-olds fell by 34,000 to 715,000 but youth long-term unemployment (18-24, 6months+) rose by 18,000 and is now 322,000.
• Adult long-term unemployment (LFS measure) has now risen to 487,000.
• Amongst the over-50s unemployment rose by 14,000 to 398,000.
• The number of people in work fell by 56,000 in the 3 months to January 2010.
• The overall employment rate has now fallen to 72.2% - almost 3 percentage points lower than 2 years ago.
• Economic inactivity increased sharply by 149,000 of which almost 100,000 is attributable to a rise in full time students

We speculated last month that the sharp rise in JSA unemployment during January was due to the snow. That seems to have been right: there has been a revision to that month's figures which has turned a 23,500 increase into a more modest 5,000 rise.

Inclusion’s monthly analysis is published here http://www.cesi.org.uk/statistics

The BBC covered the statistics release here http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8571...