By Mark Wallace
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As with every month, the new labour market statistics paint a complex picture. Measures of employment, unemployment, long term unemployment and unemployment benefits have become decoupled from each other, essentially handing both the Government and the Opposition an opportunity to build their arguments on the gaps in between.
These complexities matter more now that the Bank of England is taking unemployment into account when setting interest rates (something we raised concerns about last week).
Broadly, the new figures from the ONS are positive news – at the very least, they don't show things getting worse. Here are the top lines:
There are still underlying concerns, though:
The big picture holds good news for all of us, and good news politically.
However, the Government must now help those who risk being left behind – the human and economic costs of long-term unemployment are huge, and the longer you are out of a job the harder it becomes to get back into work. The same goes for the psychological, social and financial impacts of youth unemployment.
Politically, Labour have been driven back from their preferred battleground. Ed Balls would love to be able to crow about rising unemployment, but he can't. Instead he will attack Osborne on the (perfectly valid) grounds of long-term and youth unemployment, as well as the decline in living standards caused by wages that grow slower than the rate of inflation. The Treasury's next focus must be to deny him those lines, too.