By Vivienne Russell | 9 April 2012
A further 100,000 people in the UK will be out of work by the end of the summer, a think-tank is warning.
The Institute for Public Policy Research said unemployment would not peak until at least September. Analysing the increase in unemployment throughout 2011, the IPPR is predicting that 50,000 more men and 50,000 more women will lose their jobs this year.
Youth unemployment will increase by 41,000 while the number of jobless people aged over 50 will increase by 7,000.
Although more jobs are being created in the private sector, the IPPR said, this was not enough to offset the growth in people looking for work.
The number of jobs lost will be most acute in the Northwest and London and least acute in the Southeast and East Midlands. In the West Midlands, Northern Ireland and Southwest unemployment is forecast to fall.
Kayte Lawton, IPPR senior research fellow, said: ‘The personal tragedy of the slow economic recovery is the way unemployment will continue to rise over the next year, even once the economy begins to grow. This has been the longest recession and the slowest recovery that Britain has ever experienced.
‘The risk is that high unemployment becomes a permanent feature of the UK economy, as it did in the 1980s. Even within the context of the government’s deficit reduction plan, it is short-sighted of the government not to do more to get people back into jobs.’
