Lack of full-time positions 'worsening unemployment'

The number of Britons losing out as employers move to slash their wage bills is much higher than previously believed, newly-published figures show.

While the Office for National Statistics (ONS) recently reported that unemployment across the UK grew by 281,000 to 2.38 million over the first quarter of the year, it has now been revealed that a further one million people are also struggling on just part-time jobs as the economic climate limits the number of full-time positions being made available.

The ONS data show that 927,000 people are now working on a part-time basis as they cannot find a full-time job, the highest since the official records began back in 1992.

Commenting, the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, Brendan Barber, noted that these represent ’the masked tragedies of the recession’.

’These people won’t be showing up in the spiralling unemployment figures but the economic slowdown and their subsequent move into part-time work will have forced many of these families to rein in their spending dramatically,’ he said.

At the same time, Capital Economics has predicted that unemployment in the UK will hit three million by Christmas as more firms look to reduce their operational overheads.
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