Unemployment has shown the sharpest increase for nearly two years, climbing by 80,000 to reach 2.51 million people, according to figures released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
The total claiming Jobskeekers Allowance increased by 20,300 to 1.58 million, whilst youth unemployment rose by 78,000 to 973,000.
The jobless rate now stands at 7.9%.
Many are predicting that the number of jobless will continue to rise over coming months.
With a typical lack of saying anything worth saying, Employment Minister Chris Grayling said of the figures that "Clearly this is a very unwelcome set of figures...Any increase in unemployment is something we really don't want to see happen".
No, we'd never have guessed that, thanks for pointing it out.
Now, how about doing something about it?
We've jobless totals climbing, cutbacks galore, and still we insist on importing hundreds of thousands of people to occupy jobs that we quite simply do not have.
How long before we hit the 3 million unemployed mark at this rate?
One thing is for certain, and that is an artificially increasing population and an employment market open for half the world to come and take British jobs is completely incompatible with reducing unemployment.
Expect unemployment to continue increasing, the coalition government to babble about migration caps and unwelcome figures whilst doing nothing, and if they ever get into power again then Labour will do nothing either.
While we keep electing the usual suspects then unemployment at unacceptable levels is something that we'd better get used to.
Unemployment has shown the sharpest increase for nearly two years, climbing by 80,000 to reach 2.51 million people, according to figures released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
