Unemployment set to hit 2m as 1,000 more jobs are axed
BRITAIN’S unemployment total is on course to hit two million by Christmas after a further 1,000 workers lost their jobs yesterday.
Woolworths shed 450 staff in what is expected to be the first of many job cuts at the collapsed high street retailer.
In a further pre-Christmas blow, the Doncaster-based freight-rail company EWS yesterday announced it is to cull 530 jobs, while 208 posts will go at car components factory Linamar in Swansea.
More than 10,000 jobs have now been lost in the past week alone as Britain’s economic crisis lurches towards recession.
More than 50,000 jobs have been axed in the past two months.
Deloitte, the accountancy firm which is trying to find a buyer for Woolworths, said it will make the redundancies at the firm’s offices in Marylebone Road, London, and from its site at Castleton, in Rochdale.
The retailer employs 25,000 staff and said that none of the cuts would be made at its 815 stores or from Entertainment UK Ltd, its DVD and CD distribution business.
Neville Kahn, joint administrator at Deloitte, said: “Our expectation remains that stores will remain open beyond Christmas and that all staff in the stores will be paid in full.”
Analysts are predicting a surge in unemployment in the New Year.
Official unemployment – currently at an 11-year high of 1.82million – could reach two million by Christmas, say some analysts, with the dole queue swelling to as high as three million before economic recovery begins.
The latest official figure is the highest since the end of 1997, soon after Labour came to power.
The jobless total jumped by 140,000 in the three months to October and will be further increased by recent losses, including the 50,000 jobs in the last two months.
In that period the number of people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance rose by 36,500 last month to 980,900, the highest since spring 2001.
The number of people claiming has risen for the past nine months and is 154,800 higher than a year ago, said the Office for National Statistics. And the figures are set to get worse. Last month employment minister Tony McNulty said: “We are not at the bottom of the downturn. That’s very, very clear.”
Some 5.8 per cent of the working-age population is now jobless, the highest since 2000, and those actively looking for work are up by 182,000 on last year. Unemployment among 18 to 24-year-olds jumped sharply by 53,000 to 579,000 in the three months to October.
Long-term unemployment has also risen, with the number out of work for more than a year up by 20,000 to 435,000.
Graeme Leach, chief economist at the Institute of Directors, said the jobless figure could rise to 2.8million within two years.
He said: “For the next 12 to 18 months the only way for unemployment is up. The UK labour market is about to suffer the consequences of the once-in-a-generation financial crisis.”
The gloomy predictions came as America suffered its worst month of job losses in 34 years.
Employers slashed 533,000 jobs in November, catapulting the unemployment rate to 6.7 per cent, figures from the United States Labour Department showed.
President-elect Barack Obama admitted that the American economy would probably get worse before it got better.
