THE number of young people out of work has reached a record high of almost one million, according to the latest unemployment figures.
The youth unemployment total, which includes people in full-time education who are available and looking for work, increased by 74,000 to 991,000 between June and August.
The UK unemployment total has reached a 17-year high. Unemployment rose by 114,000 between June and August to 2.57 million, a 17-year high, according to official figures. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the unemployment rate also increased to 8.1%.
The number of people out of work and able to claim benefits rose 17,500 to 1.6 million in September.
Added to the 1.85 million temporary or part-time workers who say they want a full-time job – up 300,000 in the last two years – this means 4.4 million people are without a job or are looking for more work.
Other figures showed a record cut in the number of part-time workers, down by 175,000, and there was also a record reduction of 74,000 in the number of over-65s in employment.
The Employment Secretary, Chris Grayling, said that what the UK was now seeing was ‘the impact of the international financial crisis’.
The TUC’s general secretary, Brendan Barber, said: ‘These are terrible figures. The government’s austerity measures have turned unemployment into a full-blown crisis – with job losses not seen since the darkest days of the recession.
‘Worryingly, this is not simply the result of eurozone troubles. This unemployment crisis is state-sponsored and areas like the North East are paying a heavy price, with over one in 10 people out of work.’
PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said: ‘Almost daily now, new evidence is coming out that our economy is on the brink of another recession and our government is recklessly and cruelly driving us over the edge.’
Paul Kenny, GMB General Secretary, said: ‘In the middle of the worst international recession for 80 years the Government itself is creating unemployment with 250,000 public sector posts already gone and still more to come. These posts could have been available to the 2.57 million workers now facing the despair of mass unemployment.’
However, the crisis of capitalism is deepening by the hour, as governments frantically seek to avert a bigger collapse of the banks than we saw in 2007-2008.
The trade unions must stop the Tory savage cuts of the public sector and they must defend every job in the private sector as British capitalism bites the dust.
They must insist that there must be work-sharing without any loss in pay, and that pay itself must be linked to a trade union cost of living index, made up of the price rises in the necessities of life that working class and middle class families cannot do without.
As that index rises as inflation surges, so must wages, pensions and benefits.
The trade unions must not accept the massive job cull in the public sector. They must defend every job and every service from cuts and closures with a policy of occupation.
This is the only way that wages, jobs and living standards can be defended, and the future secured.
The basic issue is that since the capitalist system is incapable of advancing humanity and instead is driving it backwards into some new 1930s black hole, it must go and be replaced by a socialist order of society.
This means that the working class must have a new and revolutionary leadership that will bring down the coalition with a general strike and bring in a workers government and a socialist planned economy to provide jobs, education and a future for all.
