The Office for National Statistics yesterday announced that unemployment has continued to rise, taking the jobless figure to 2.4 million, a sharp rise of 220,000 in three months. This means that 7.8% of the workforce are now unemployed. Beneath the statistics lies a more depressing number. According to the BBC's calculations, the number of 16 to 24 year-olds unemployed now stands at 928,000 or 12.6%.
The jobless figures announcement comes at a time when Conservatives have been analysing Jobcentres. IN recent years the Government has been closing jobcentres, including the jobcentre in Stourport on Severn's Bridge Street. Now Stourport's unemployed, seeking jobs, have to travel to Kidderminster.
But with the recession biting ever harder, it now seems that a huge number of jobcentres across the country have run into capacity problems - including Kidderminster's jobcentre in Lower Mill Street. However, because of the huge demand for resources across the country (a staggering 385 jobcentres out of a total of 741 need to be expanded), only 18 jobcentres have had work completed. The expected cost of the work to be done will be over £20 million. Kidderminster has yet to be given a date for these important expansion works - at a time when unemployment has doubled in Wyre Forest.
Mark Garnier, Wyre Forest's Conservative Parliamentary Spokesman, said: "Gordon Brown's extraordinary hubris has meant that there was no preparation for the inevitable downturn. The crises with jobcentres is just another example of how Brown's assertion that he had re-written the laws of economics by bringing 'an end to boom and bust' has meant this country is chronically ill prepared for this recession.
"For Wyre Forest, it is an outrage that it was ever considered a good idea to make the unemployed travel further to find work. The closing of the jobcentre in Stourport was just plain stupid."