Britain will over the coming months endure the biggest rise in unemployment of any major advanced economy.
That was the conclusion of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) last week, when it warned that UK joblessness will soar from 4.8pc last year to 5.5pc by the end of 2026.
When Labour took office in July 2024, unemployment was just 4.1pc. But the number of payrolled employees has since fallen in fourteen of the twenty-one subsequent months to April – with around 1.81 million now unemployed.
It is unusual, when the population is rising, for the number of payrolled jobs across the economy to fall.
But that pattern has been broken under Labour.