1.09m women unemployed

The number of women unemployed has reached 1.09 million, according to the latest unemployment statistics.

According to the Office for National Statistics, 2.6m people ot 8.3% of the economically active population were unemployed in the three months to September, with 1.02 of these being young people under 24.

Anna Bird, Acting Chief Executive of the Fawcett Society, said: “The Government’s approach to reducing the deficit is pushing women out of the workplace, and threatening their financial independence. Recent research found that more than two thirds of jobs lost in local government between the first quarter of 2010 and the second quarter of 2011 belonged to women.  

“At the same time,  women are bearing the brunt of cuts to benefits – 11 billion of the 18 billion pounds cut through changes to tax and benefits each year is coming from women’s pockets. Decades of steady, albeit slow, progress on equality for women is being dismantled, as cuts to women’s jobs and the benefits and services they rely on turn back time on women’s equality.

Dr John Philpott, Chief Economic Adviser at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, said: "The UK is now clearly suffering a major jobs and pay crunch under the combined impact of tough fiscal policy medicine and very uncertain conditions in the global economy. The private sector is simply unable, at present to create enough jobs to offset public sector job cuts."

He said unemployment is at best likely to peak at around 2.75 million next year and if the economy experienced a double-dip recession it could reach 3 million by 2014.

He added: "While the rise in headline youth unemployment to 1.02 million is set to grab most attention the most worrying feature of these latest jobs figures is a quarterly fall of 305,000 in the number of employees (spilt roughly half and half between full-timers and part-timers), including almost 100,000 temps. Without a corresponding 100,000 increase in self-employment the overall jobs situation would thus look worse still.

"Also very worrying is the rise to 868,000 in the number of people unemployed and looking for work for more than a year, 30% of whom are aged 16-24. It is these long-term unemployed young people, rather than unemployed youths as a whole, who should be the prime target of Government policy measures."

Recruitment firm Robert Half, however, said some sectors were not suffering as much as others. Business services, natural resources and some areas of financial services are industries where demand still outweighs supply for top talent, it said, particularly in finance, accounting and IT.