Week 3, 2012: UK Unemployment

Summary: The bad news for the UK economy this week was that total unemployment had risen again in the 3 months leading up to November 2011. Almost all of the predictions we received in our recent survey suggested that unemployment would continue to get worse throughout 2012.

What does the chart show? The blue line, measured against the left hand axis, shows the total number of unemployed people aged 16 and over, in thousands, over the preceding three months. To qualify as officially unemployed, one must be jobless but actively seeking work. The red line, measured against the right hand axis, shows the proportion of the total number of unemployed that are male. The dashed black line represents the point at which exactly half of all unemployed people are male.

Why is the chart interesting? Unemployment has now reached 2.685m (its highest point since the summer of 1994), and looks set to continue growing. In fact, while most of the people who responded to our survey thought that both GDP and inflation would improve by Q3 2012, unemployment was consistently predicted to get worse.

The proportion of men making up the total unemployed figure has hovered around 60% since the late 1990s, but over the past year this has begun to shift as more women are becoming unemployed.