Everywhere you look jobs are under threat
Employment fell by 1.2% or 25,000 year on year, a marked change from 2007 — a year that saw employment grow by 3.7% or 80,000. Employment growth slowed sharply in the opening half of 2008 before turning negative in Q3. Indeed, there was an even bigger decline in full-time employment, which fell by 33,000 or almost 2% in the year to Q3 2008.
Meanwhile, the unemployment rate climbed to 6.3% in Q3 2008, up from 5.4% in the previous three months and 4.4% a year earlier. The Q3 2008 QNHS puts the number of unemployed at 161,000, up from 107,000 in Q3 2007. Live register data suggests that the trend in jobless numbers remains strongly upwards.
