‘Total’ unemployment is 6.3 million

14 Feb 2012, by Anjum Klair in Labour market

New analysis published by the TUC today shows that unemployment in the UK stands at 6.3 million, when using the American U6 measure of unemployment. While the UK has two common measures of joblessness, ILO unemployment (2.69 million) and the claimant count (1.6 million), the US uses six measures of joblessness that incorporate long-term unemployment, recent job losses, redundancies and under-employment, such as working part-time because full-time work isn’t available.

Using official UK government data, the TUC analysis has replicated the six measures of US unemployment and found that using the broadest measure of joblessness, U6 or ‘total’ unemployment in the UK is currently over 6.3 million. The highest it has been since records began in April 1993, when it was 6.1 million.

Total Unemployment compared to ILO unemployment

(Data in thousands)

While ILO unemployment (2.95 million in April 1993) was higher in the early 1990s than today, under-employment,  people working part-time because they cannot find full time jobs is higher today  at (1.3 million) than at any point since April 1993, when it stood at 802,000.

The analysis also shows that under-employment, people doing temporary or part-time jobs because they cannot find permanent or full-time work has risen to a record 1.9 million.

Total Unemployment

(Data in thousands) 

The record levels of under-employment today show that the jobs crisis is far worse than the headline figures suggests, while involuntary part-time and temporary jobs are better than no work at all in most cases, these tend to be low-paid, insecure, have little or no career prospects and so not a sustainable way to solve the UK’s labour market problems.

The TUC is calling on the government to acknowledge the scale of the jobs crisis, rather than simply repeat the ill-informed claim that there are plenty of jobs out there and blaming the unemployed. It wants ministers to take action to get vital investment into the private sector so that it starts creating jobs, stop putting hundreds of thousands of public servants on the dole and boost job schemes to get younger people back into work.

 Source: ONS

Descriptions of the six measures of US unemployment (U1-U6)
U1: Persons unemployed for 15 weeks or longer (These figures are not included in U6 unemployment).
U2: Job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs. (The TUC has used redundancy figures as the nearest UK equivalent. These figures are not included in U6 unemployment.)
U3: Total unemployed (official unemployment rate)
U4: Total unemployed plus discouraged workers
U5: Total unemployed, plus discouraged workers, plus all other persons marginally attached to the labour market. (The UK equivalent of ‘marginally attached’ are the ‘want work’ figures – those who say they would like a regular paid job, but who do not meet the internationally agreed definition of unemployment because they have not been looking for work in the last four weeks and/or they were unable to start working within two weeks.)
U6: Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labour market, plus total employed part time for economic reasons

Source: www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cpsatab15.htm
You can download a full table of U1-U6 unemployment in the UK from April 1993 to October 2011