Confused? It depends how you 'spin' the story. The Blair Broadcasting Corporation proudly trumpets "UK unemployment continues to fall" on the Government's "preferred" ILO measurement of unemployment by 15,000 to 1.4 million between February and April. The headline could also have been "UK unemployment continues to rise" as the unemployment claimant count rose for the fourth month in a row to 855,300 in May. The BBC helpfully points this out just two sentences later in the same report.
Either way, more unemployment benefit is being paid now than in February, March or April 2005.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Let's not forget why unemployment has gone "down" - the UK's public sector grew by 1.4 million employees between 1997 and 2004:
"Earlier this year, an analysis of the official Labour Force Survey figures by City broker Williams de Broë found that the increase in public sector employment since 1997 has been significantly larger than the decrease in the unemployment claimant count, which has fallen by 787,000"
see
http://www.management-issues.com/display_page.asp?section=research&id=2054
PSW
The country is so much better as a result of such public largesse too!!
So despite heavy job losses annonounced in April and May such as IBM and Marconi and of course the biggie MG Rover, the total falls.
These figures a joke.
Post a Comment