IPPR: Real risk of 1980s recession

Tony Dolphin, senior economist at the Institute for Public Policy Research, commented on the latest unemployment statistics:

“These latest figures shows that the employment landscape is looking so bleak that increasing numbers of people are giving up the search for work altogether.

“While the vast majority of people who lose their job do manage to find a new one, people who give up looking for work are much less likely to ever re-enter the labour market. There is a real risk that we are going back to the recessions of 1980s and 1990s when hundreds of thousands of people retired early or went onto long-term benefits because they saw no prospect of getting a job. During that period the numbers on incapacity benefits trebled – and we have lived with the consequences ever since.

“As well as ruining individual lives, long term worklessness blights communities and destroys the future prospects of young people. The government must use the welfare reform bill to outline ways in which more people can be kept in work or found work and the budget must include a bold strategy for growth and job creation.”