THE TELEGRAPH: More than one in four adults in Britain are not working, after a record number left the workforce in recent months, official figures indicated.
A total of 10.6 million people either did not have a job, or have stopped looking for one, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics, which indicated that more people than ever before had abandoned the workplace – choosing instead to study, go on sick leave or just give up searching for a job.
A record 149,000 left the workforce and became "economically inactive", between November last year and January, the ONS said. These people more than offset the fall in the headline unemployment.
Unemployment fell for the third month in a row, dropping by 33,000 to hit 2.45 million. It has yet to breach the symbolic 2.5 million mark, let alone the 3 million barrier that haunted the recessions of the early 1990s and 1980s.
However, economists immediately expressed caution about the monthly figures from the Office for National Statistics.
The total number of economically inactive hit 8.16 million, the highest since the ONS started recording this measure in 1971.
The number out of a job, or econically inactive totals 10.6 million, or 28 per cent of adults of working age. >>> | Wednesday, March 17, 2010
