The very middle class dole queue: Jobseekers describe their first taste of unemployment

They are the human faces of the credit crunch. 

This was the sobering scene just after breakfast time in suburban South-East London yesterday when the local JobCentre opened its doors at 9.30am.



On the day that unemployment reached 1.86million, the snapshot of those seeking work starkly illustrates the middle class backgrounds of those being thrown out of work.

The Daily Mail spoke to a string of well-qualified business analysts, teachers, marketing consultants, recruitment managers and personal assistants - all of whom are experiencing unemployment for the first time.

All had previously enjoyed the benefits of good jobs but are now facing the stark reality of no work for the New Year.

Significantly, many were once employed by the building trade - which has been hardest hit by the slump and property market crash. Many of those the Mail spoke to still appeared shocked by their sudden unemployment.

Father of two Jonathan Birss, 40, a former business analyst who once earned up to £100,000 a year, was signing on for the first time after losing his job when a major IT contract came to an end.

Mr Birss, if Chislehurst, Kent, said: 'Signing on feels a lot like failure. It's the last thing I've ever wanted to do, I just want to provide for my family and it's not really possible at the moment. It's demoralising and humiliating.'

Francoise Raingeard, 58, a former personal assistant who earned £32,000, has been signing on for two months. She lost her job after the Government-backed postal watchdog, Postwatch merged.

She said: 'There are jobs available, it's just that too many people are applying for them.'

She has made more than 80 job applications but had only one interview in the past month.

Stephen Gibbs, 52, a former building site manager earning £50,000, was signing on for the first time. He was made redundant earlier this year, having been laid off after 35 years in the industry while younger workers on a lower salary were kept on.

He has no children but cares for his elderly father. His wife is a part-time youth worker.

Because he registered as self-employed 18 months ago, Mr Gibbs has been denied the dole for another six weeks.

He said: 'I think it's disgusting. Some people have never worked. I've worked hard all my life and paid taxes but now, when I really need it, I get nothing.

'I have been prudent with my savings but they are depleting quickly. I still have to pay the £600 mortgage each month on the house and it's getting increasingly difficult.' continues here

All 807 Woolworths stores to shut by January 5 as 27,000 jobs are axed

All 807 Woolworths stores will have closed down by January 5, the group announced yesterday. 

A countdown for the closure of the chain, a fixture on the High Street for 99 years, was triggered last night after no one offered enough cash to buy it as a going concern. 

The news means that some 22,000 permanent staff and 5,000 temporary workers will suffer a miserable Christmas and unemployment in the New Year.



The first 200 stores will close on Saturday, December 27, another 200 go on December 30, a further 200 on January 2 and the remainder on Monday, January 5.

Staff will be given just ten days' notice before their particular store closes.

Shopworkers' union Usdaw said it was 'appalled' at the news.

Some 50million new items are being delivered into stores this week, including DVDs, CDs and 200,000 copies of the X Factor single Hallelujah.

The firm administering the winding up of Woolworths, Deloitte, said current discounts of 20 to 60 per cent will be increased as the clock ticks down to store closures.

Deloitte said it has received interest from other retailers, including supermarkets, clothing and value chains, to buy 300 Woolworths stores. The others may simply be returned to their landlords and boarded up.

Joint administrator Neville Khan said: 'We are now moving to the closing down sale period.

'It is a very difficult situation for a lot of people, particularly the staff, and we are trying to deal with it in as sensitive a way as possible.'

He raised hopes that jobs could be saved, saying that - as far as possible under privacy laws - Deloitte would pass on the details of current Woolies employees to the buyers of the 300 stores.

Mr Khan also revealed that administrators are in talks over the sale of Woolworths trademark and its Worth It! value brand. Consequently, it is possible the name could be revived at some point.

Ironically, Woolworths has seen some of its biggest-ever sales in recent weeks on the back of its closing down sale. Shoppers who deserted the chain for decades have flocked back in search of bargains.

Woolworths' distribution arm EUK - which supplies CDs to supermarkets and Zavvi - is also in administration. More than 700 jobs from this business have been lost, however there are hopes it can be sold, which would save the remaining 400 staff.

Mr Khan said the task of saving Woolworths had been made harder because potential buyers have had difficulty raising the money needed from the banks, which have imposed strict controls on new lending. continues here

LEVEL OF YOUNG JOBLESS ATTACKED

Business leaders attacked the level of youth unemployment and warned that young people were more likely to get involved in a life of crime if they didn't have a job.

The Confederation of British Industry said it was "unacceptable" that Britain ranked 23rd out of 28 in an international league table of young people not in education, employment or training.

The picture could worsen "dramatically" in the coming months as the economy suffers, said the business group, arguing that £250 million a year could be saved if the number of young people claiming benefits was halved.

John Cridland, deputy director general of the CBI said: "The CBI has long warned that the UK's approach to disengaged youth is failing. Now we can see the knock-on effects that such failure has on the whole of society.

"This is not just an issue of so many school leavers failing to achieve the expected minimum of five good GCSEs after 11 years of full-time education. This is about the UK churning out thousands of people without the basic skills and attitudes they need to make their way in the world. continues here

LET THE JOBLESS LAG LOFTS, SAYS BROWN

Gordon Brown provoked fury yesterday by telling the unemployed to get new jobs “lagging lofts”.

His disregard for the misery caused by the economic crisis came as experts predicted the jobless total could hit three million.

Tory Work and Pensions spokesman Chris Grayling said: “If training people to lag roofs is the best suggestion he can make, then it doesn’t say much for the challenges we face as a nation.”

Whitehall figures yesterday showed the number of people out of work soared by 164,000 to 1.79million in the three months to August – the biggest rise in 17 years.

Experts feared the increase was accelerating amid the economic downturn, with some predicting the three million jobless total would be reached by 2010.

The grim news was being seen as a wake-up call to the PM last night as he basked in the adulation of European leaders for his financial rescue measures to bail-out beleaguered banks.

Speaking at an EU summit in Brussels, Mr Brown claimed a Government energy-saving scheme to insulate houses could be a major source of job opportunities.

“We are training large numbers of additional people to do that work in insulation and that will become one of the unemployment programmes that will grow over the next period of time,” he said.

“We will do whatever we can to ensure people can stay in jobs, and that those who lose their jobs can get new skills for the next job and we will do whatever we can by creating new opportunities for work over the next few months.”

Mr Grayling said: “For all the hype surrounding Gordon Brown in the past few days, these comments show just how out of touch he is with what is going on in the real economy.

“He promised that he had ended ‘boom and bust’ but the unemployment figures show what an absurd claim that was. Now as people are paying the price for that failure, he has nothing substantial to offer them.”

Yesterday’s sharp rise in unemployment was the biggest increase since 1991, raising the jobless rate by 0.5 per cent to 5.7 per cent of the total workforce.

The news was compounded by an announcement of 800 job losses at US-owned computer chip firm Freescale Semiconductor in East Kilbride, near Glasgow.

TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: “This is extremely bad news and these figures do not even show the effects of the bank crash.”

Vicky Redwood, UK economist at Capital Economics, said: “Worse is to come. By the end of 2010 we expect unemployment to hit three million.”

Separate figures released in Parliament yesterday showed that while the number of British-born workers in jobs was falling, the employment of immigrants has rocketed over the past two years.

Since 2006 the number of Britons in work fell by 365,000 while 865,000 more newcomers from overseas have got jobs.

The Office of National Statistics revealed the number of people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance increased by 31,800 in September to 939,900, the eighth consecutive monthly rise and the highest figure for almost two years. continues here

Britain IS in recession and 500,000 will lose their job by the end of the year, CBI warns

The economy is in a recession and will not recover for at least a year, the Confederation of British Industry will warn today. 

The business lobby group will also claim an extra 500,000 workers could lose their jobs by the end of next year. 

The grim forecast is the first warning from an authoritative UK source that the world’s fifth-largest economy has plunged into negative territory. 

Last week, the European Union and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development gave similar warnings. 

Richard Lambert, director general of the CBI, said both businesses and consumers are suffering a ‘very uncomfortable time’. 

Although official figures do not confirm the county is in a recession - defined as two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth - Government statistics often lag behind the true state of the economy. 

The latest figures, for April to June, show GDP growth was 0 per cent. 

The CBI will also say it expects the recession to trigger a sharp rise in the number of unemployed, raising the total to around 2.1million.

About 7 per cent of economically active workers will be unemployed, it will claim - the highest rate for more than a decade and larger than June’s forecast of 1.83million by the end of 2009. 

The biggest casualties will be those who work in banking, housing and retail - sectors the CBI predicts will become the ‘epicentre’ of the unemployment storm. 

To make matters worse, it also expects inflation, currently 4.4 per cent, to keep on rising for the next few months. 

And the CBI will warn the trend of average pay rises for both public and private sector workers will continue to be lower than inflation. 

Mr Lambert said: ‘The “R" word is obviously a big deal for politicians. 

‘In the real world, if you talk to businesses people or households about a plus or a minus in the GDP figures, it does not make any difference at all. It is a very uncomfortable time.’ continues here

If they cared about us, if they really did, they’d stop immigration, we simply cannot afford more people, more strain upon our fragile economy but you know they don’t care, we are nothing, merely drones to pay taxes, whilst they swoosh by in their high powered cars. They can barely hear us in their ivory towers, barely discern our distress, we are so far below them, that they can hardly see us, let alone relate, oh it’ll be you not them, that loses your job, you not them, that will lose your home, your children, not theirs that goes without. The fat cats will remain fat cats whilst we, right down there at the bottom of the tower, remain inconsequential, yes they’ll come to you again, when they need your vote, to prop up the lie of democracy, they’ll come to you with higher bills and demands for payment.

What they will never do is help us, what they will never do is face the truth, finance must never rule a nation as now it is permitted to do, the power of the moneyed elite is the root course of societal problems, break the power of the banks and you’ve broken the back of the problem. Finance should be subservient to the people, it should represent the nations labour, now however, speculation, that is to say, non-worked for profit, is the order of the day, the more you have the more you earn, whilst the masses struggle to live.

Some say it will fall apart, that this is the beginning of profound change, I believe I shall hedge my bets, for centuries now we have been held in moneys grip, to believe that such a hold can be relinquished is but a pipe-dream. No-where, no-where upon the planet, do people govern their own affairs, no-where upon this planet does true freedom prevail, so it doesn’t matter, any hardship to come, it is what we have always faced, the rise and fall of false economics.

We are pawns in a great game, worthless, usable, destined for extinction, amalgamation into a new brown drone class, which to will serve finance, serve the greedy and struggle to live, the ebb and tide of finance again unhindered. It is a game to them you see, the champagne class, the reprehensible leftists and the unhinged multiculturalists and we mere sport. 14

Recession and job losses could start in months, say bosses

Britain is on the verge of a recession and the number of permanent job vacancies is falling, two reports warn today.

 
The British Chambers of Commerce describes the outlook as 'grim' and warns that a recession could start within months. 

It says it has uncovered evidence of a 'menacing deterioration' in the economic outlook. Another report, from the accountants KPMG, shows that the number of permanent job vacancies fell in June for the first time in five years.

The number being put into permanent jobs by recruitment agencies fell at its
sharpest rate in more than five years. The British Chambers of Commerce also said it fears for workers' jobs over the next 18 months, predicting up to 300,000 could be affected. 

This is equal to 550 losing their jobs every day, including weekends, by the end of 2009. 

David Frost, director general of the business lobby group, said there is 'a real risk of recession in the coming months'. He said: 'The outlook is grim. We believe that the correction period is likely to be longer and nastier than anticipated.' 

Nearly 5,000 firms took part in the research for the BCC report. Low unemployment has been a feature of recent years, but official figures have started to show that the jobless total is beginning to increase. 

The number who do not have a job - but want to work - jumped 38,000 to 1.64million in the three months to the end of April. 

The KMPG report, published jointly with the Recruitment and Employment Confederation, said there is worse to come. 

Alan Nolan, director of KPMG, said: 'This really is a sobering set of figures proving the credit crunch has finally taken its toll and is now severely weakening the UK jobs market. 

'Many employers now seem to be accepting the inevitable - they will have to cut costs by laying off people because their businesses won't be growing as much as they could have expected a couple of months ago.' Thousands of redundancies in the City and the housebuilding sector are just the start, he added. continues here

But lets keep importing immigrants shall we, because the British worker doesn’t matter, lets saturate a diminishing job market with cheap labour, lower wages, place more pressure on housing and undermine our whole infrastructure.