Jobless at 10-year high

Unemployment reached a 10-year high of just under two million as a record number of people were made redundant and job vacancies slumped to a new low, official figures showed today.

The number of people claiming Jobseeker's Allowance has now risen for 12 months in a row, up by 73,800 in January to 1.23 million, the highest total since the summer of 1999.

The wider measure of unemployment, which includes people not eligible for benefits, increased by 146,000 in the three months to December to 1.97 million, the worst figure since just after Labour came to power in 1997.

The figures were mirrored in Shropshire and Mid Wales, where the number of people claiming the allowance rose by 1,209 to 9,957.

Shropshire saw a rise in the jobless figure of 547 up to 4,139. In Telford & Wrekin the figure was up from 3,490 to 3,962 and in Powys it rose by 188 to 1,854.

The biggest rise in Shropshire was in Shrewsbury and Atcham where the figure rose by 209 from 1,138 to 1,347. In Oswestry the number of people claiming the benefit went up to 750, and in Bridgnorth, it rose from 558 to 656. North Shropshire saw a rise in unemployment of 111 to 910 and in South Shropshire, the figure was up 48 to 476.

The figures confounded experts who had predicted that unemployment would surge over two million today following a spate of job losses in recent months. Unemployment has now increased by 369,000 over the past year and is expected to top three million as a result of the current recession.

Almost 260,000 people were made redundant in the last three months of 2008, the highest figure since records began in 1995 and an increase of 104,000 over the previous quarter. Job vacancies fell by 76,000 to 504,000 in the three months to January, the lowest since records began in 2001, according to today's data from the Office for National Statistics.

By Business Editor Amy Bould