Credit crunch fallout starts to show

In contrast to the downward trend of previous months, unemployment has gone up.

Under the Labour Force Survey (LFS) count it rose by 14,000 to 1.61 million in the first quarter of 2008.

The LFS count which includes people not eligible for benefits had a steady unemployment rate of 5.2%. Male unemployment was responsible for the rise with the number of jobless men up by 24,000 to 933,000, while the number of jobless women fell by 10,000 to 679,000. The unemployment rate for men was up to 5.5% from 5.4%, while for women it was down 0.1% from 4.9% the previous quarter.

Unemployment under the claimant count was also up, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The count, which only includes those drawing Jobseeker’s Allowance, rose by 4,800 to to 806,300 in April but the unemployment rate was steady at 2.5%.

The number of unemployed men on benefit rose to 588,700 with the unemployment rate steady at 3.4% — and the number of unemployed women was up to 217,600 with the unemployment rate also rising to 1.5%.

Manufacturing continues to shed jobs with 27,000 lost in the first quarter of 2008 compared with a year earlier.

In the three months to March, 111,000 people were made redundant. This was 34,000 more than a year ago, according to the ONS.