Actual jobless figures are over 4.5 million despite the Office of National Statistics (ONS) finding that 2.44 million people are unemployed, according to the Chartered institute of Personnel and development (CIPD).

The official labour market figures released last Thursday (13 August 2009) by the ONS show a slight deceleration in the speed at which unemployment is rising, with the latest headline stating that unemployment figures having increased by 220,000 to 2.44 million. However, Dr JOhn Philpott, Chief Economist at the CIPD, claims that the unemployment figures are not fully reflected, due to a rise of 127,000 in the number of people classed as "economically inactive" i.e. jobless but not seeking work. Philpott claims that this would have taken the figures to above 2.5 million.

Philpott comments: "More than 2.1 million of these 'hidden jobless' say that they want to work, which points to a labour market in deepening distress, continuing to shed jobs at an alarming rate and with the genuine level of joblessness already above 4.5 million.

"The situation would be less depressing if we could comfort ourselves with the prospect of a swift return to strong economic growth. But if the Bank of England is correct this is not on the cards. The best our week jobs market can look forward to in the near term is an anaemic recovery. And at worst, as the CIPD warned earlier this week, an anaemic recovery might well trigger a further avalanche of redundancies later this year."