LONDON - The number of people who are out of a job in the UK continued to climb for a sixth month in a row in July. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) today released the unemployment figures for the month of July and these make for some very tough reading.
Almost 2,800 people were added to the unemployment roster in July taking the total number of jobless in the country to 866,000. The ONS also said that the International Labour Organization unemployment rate had shot up by 27,000 to 1.42 million. The ILO unemployment rate reflects the number of people who are jobless and are not receiving any benefits as well. This increase in the numbers took the rate up to 4.7 percent, the ONS said. The data also showed that the unemployment is particularly rife among women. But the rate of the jobless who are claiming benefits stood unchanged at 2.8 percent despite the rise in other concurrent sections/ This means that the UK continues to be the country with the lowest jobless rate in the world.
The increase in the number of jobless can be blamed at the collapse of the manufacturing giant MG Rover where 6,200 job losses were reported from its factory at Longbridge in Birmingham.
Commenting on these dismal figures, Alan Clarke, UK economist at BNP Paribas said, "The rise in unemployment over the last six months in combination with stagnant retail sales and shrinking manufacturing production shows that the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee was right to cut interest rates."
Wage growth registered a 5.6 percent increase in the public sector while the private sector saw a 3.8 percent growth. Both the figures remain unchanged. Howard Archer, chief UK economist at Global Insight observed that the market was weakening due to the slow growth in the economy, "Although only modest so far, the rise in unemployment threatens to add to the pressures on the consumer and increases the risk that spending could remain subdued for some time to come," he said.
Posted
on : Thu, 18 Aug 2005 11:20 GMT | General News
By : Rob Davis
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