Unemployment
Five million Spanish out of work.
Source: BBC News
Unemployment to soar in the UK to over 3 million.
Nothing like a bit of bad news to get back into the swing of things. 
According to Sky News unemployment in the UK is going to soar to over 3 million next year. Strangely enough all the economists were predicting a smooth ride just a few months ago, but that has all changed now.
UK prospects have worsened significantly since our last forecast in January. We are now predicting much larger UK GDP declines. Consequently, we now expect bigger unemployment increases and larger budget deficits. Unless the huge falls in UK capital investment are halted and reversed, the UK’s productive potential will be seriously weakened.
What gets me, is these economists are meant to know what they are talking about, so back in January when they did their initial forecast, surely they could see then that businesses and life in general was going to get a lot worse before it got better. Not that it would have changed anything, but still, it would save them looking silly now. It doesn’t take a degree to see things are bad.
Unemployment soaring in China.
UK unemployment rises, not looking great for 2009.
The number of people claiming unemployment benefit climbed to 1.07 million last month, exceeding the one million mark for the first time since 2001.
The number of redundancies has also risen sharply as the effects of the Economic Downturn have spread beyond the financial and construction sectors. The number of redundancies, during the three months to the end of October, increased by 41000 to 180000. The last time the level was this high was in 2002.
The number of redundancies is expected to continue to remain high with official figures lagging behind the recent spate of job cuts announced by hard-pressed businesses like National Express.
The figures revealed a disturbing rise in the number of jobless young people, aged 18-24, up by 55000 in the three months to October to 597000. This was the highest number since 1995.
