The jobless total rises by up 128,000 to 2.64 million – but the number on benefits is falling. One employment expert tells Channel 4 News that people are being “slung out of the benefits system.”
The latest unemployment figures from the Office of National Statistics, show that the number of people claiming jobseekers’ allowance last month also increased, by 3,000 to 1.6 million.
The biggest rise in people out of work was seen in the east of England, where there was a rise of 26,000 people up to 218,000, followed by Scotland with 25,000 up to 229,000 and the North West where figures rose by 19,000 to 301,000. In London another 13,000 are now officially out of work, putting the total there at 423,000.
Most parts of the country saw a rise, with only the East Midlands and Northern Ireland bucking the trend, with fewer people out of work than in the previous quarter.
The unions have roundly condemned the rise which they say is a result of deliberate government policy.
TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: “Ministers will desperately attempt to lay the blame on the Eurozone but it is the UK government alone that is responsible for the huge cull of public sector employment. There are now 12 public sector workers losing their jobs for every new post which is created in the private sector.”
“These latest figures show some sign that the labour market is stabilising” Chris Grayling, Minister for Employment
But Minister for Employment Chris Grayling said the situation was not as bad as it could be: “There has obviously been an unwelcome increase in unemployment since the summer but these latest figures show some sign that the labour market is stabilising. The number of people in employment is higher than last month’s published figure and the number of unemployed people is steadying. Encouragingly this is also the case for young people not in education.
He pointed to a drop in the numbers claiming any sort of benefit: “Our welfare reforms are having a positive impact, with overall benefit claimant numbers falling by around 40,000 in the last 18 months.”
FactCheck: Private sector jobs pain for the PM
So how can benefit numbers fall while unemployment rises?
Professor Steve Fothergill is an expert in benefits and unemployment at Sheffield Hallam University. He told Channel 4 News how people whose benefits are removed join the jobless total: “Over the next three years one million people will be diverted off incapacity benefit, of which 300,000 will end up on Job Seekers Allowance and around 600,000 will get slung right out of the benefits system. Even some people who stay on incapacity benefit will be required to do work related activities so they will meet the criteria for the labour force survey measure.”
“Quite a lot of people who are out of work find they don’t qualify for Job Seekers Allowance” Professor Steve Fothergill
The labour force survey is the figure that produces today’s number of 2.68 million people as being out of work. It covers not only benefit claimants, but all people who are looking for work. This gap, between those out of work and those actually on Job Seekers Allowance, has according to Professor Fothergill, widened over the past few years. “Twenty years ago the numbers on unemployment benefit were similar to the numbers measured by the labour force survey, but during the recession years the gap has widened and is now around a million. Quite a lot of people who are out of work find they don’t qualify for Job Seekers Allowance. It’s now means tested so if you have a partner in work you don’t get anything.”
“It’s forcing individuals to be supported by other household members and households are pushed down closer to the poverty line.”
Channel 4 Northern Correspondent Morland Sanders meets an extraordinarily diligent job seeker:
Through the bedroom window of a County Durham semi is a very personal set of unemployment figures. Stephen Stubbs sits at a computer typing out a job application, he's managed around five a day for the last twelve months and reckons that in total he's sent out 1500 applications. In that time he's received only one invitation for interview and it is today.
He puts a suit on for the first time in more than a year and sets off for an interview with an insurance firm in Darlington, armed with the qualifications he recently gained when he retrained as an accountant and a real determination to get a job. "It's about self-worth, I want to open my pay packet and see that I have paid my National Insurance, my tax - I want to feel part of society"
Stephen openly admits he has a number of negatives: He's 47, he lives in the North East of England where there aren't many jobs right now and he's visually impaired. He feels employers will almost always leave him at the bottom of the pile of hopefuls.
But after the interview, he's feeling upbeat. "They laughed at my jokes, liked my answers and they said it showed some initiative that I was putting myself on Channel 4 News"
He'll find out at the end of the week if he's got the job or if he's back to writing yet more application forms.
Professor Fothergill added that coming reforms to benefits for single parents will also add numbers onto unemployment figures. Lone parents who have a child under seven do not currently have to look for work but from next year that will go down to five. At that point the parent will be transferred to Job Seekes Allowance and will have to look for work.
Professor Fothergill says that unemployment figures will go up: “regardless of what happens in the economy” because of this shifting of people from non-work related benefit onto benefits which are dependent on them looking for work. But he points to evidence that shows people coming off incapacity benefit will not find work easily: “I have done enormous amounts of research and this is a group with multiple obstacles to finding work. They will be carrying some sort of ill health, they have been out of the labour market for years, they are at the back end of their working life and they are poorly qualified.
“These people are not in the Surrey’s and Buckinghamshires. They are in the Welsh Valleys, County Durhams, Glasgow, where the labour market is difficult.”
“Until this process of pushing people off incapacity benefit, governments were hiding the scale of unemployment by parking people on incapacity benefit. But the process of hiding people has been put into reverse.”
At the Citizens Advice Bureau, Social Policy Officer Vicky Pearlman told Channel 4 News that there has been an increase in inquiries about how to claim benefits, with people left confused by the new employment and support allowance. This is the benefit that has replaced disability allowance.
She said: “Our major concern is that these reforms are designed for much brighter economic times. There is an assumption that people will find work but there is no work out there. Employers will be looking for someone with a recent work record.
“Of the people coming off Job Seekers allowance, some are going into work but we are interested in where other people go. It’s very much about vanishing. The government don’t say these people are going into work but they let it appear that’s what is happening.”