Labour looks set to smash straight into a jobs problem

Is Labour hurtling towards a jobs problem? The latest official data release does not make for happy reading for our accidentprone government.

- JAMES MOORE

The rate of unemployment among people aged 16 and above rose to 4.3 per cent over the July to September reporting period. The claimant count, this time for October, meanwhile increased to 1.8 million, a rise on the month and on the year.

The number of vacancies between August and October fell by 35,000 to 831,000. That is the 28th – you read that right – consecutive decline. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) always likes to point out that the number of openings “remain above” the pre-Covid level. But a cursory look at the graphs it produces tells us that it won’t be able to say that for much longer.

A note of caution: there have long been worries about the reliability of the agency’s labour force data, to the extent that the Bank of England’s chief economist wrote to the ONS to criticise its failure since last year to produce reliable figures. Liz McKeown, ONS director of economic statistics, warned that some of the smorgasbord of data the agency coughs up regrettably still has to be treated with “caution” because promised improvements are “still feeding through”.