British unemployment rises to 2.5 million or 7.9 %

The British office of National Statistics is reporting that for the period August 2010 to October 2010 unemployment in Britain rose by 35,000 people. Almost all of the job losses occurred in the public sector where 33,000 jobs were lost.The private sector was flat with very few new jobs created as employment was stable there. Since the coalition government plans to cut thousands of public sector jobs in the coming months the data does not bode well for the British economy or the unemployed. There are now over 2.5 million unemployed workers in Britain and judging from these results and the Government's plans to slash further despite the deep recession and banking crisis it is likely that unemployment will continue to rise.

There are currently just over 6.1 million workers in the public sector and 21.5 million in the private sector in Britain. In the U.S. core inflation rose by just 0.8 % year to year in November. The global economy while recovering from the worst phase of the slump is still fragile and austerity minded deficit hysteria politicians ought to rethink their strategy and policy. Prime Minister Cameron ought to remember that the great British conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan was a Keynesian. It was his family's publishing house that published Keynes' General Theory.

Yesterday was my son Max's 16 th birthday. It was also the 75 th anniversary of the completion of the General Theory as Keynes penned the preface to the completed work on December 13, 1935. He would not have been pleased by British economic policy in the current circumstances.