The Office for National Statistics were released with John Philpott, chief economic adviser at the chartered institute of personnel and Development, stating that the figures send a clear SOS message to the new coalition government of the condition of the UK labour market.

Unemployment rose to 2.51 million, this is the highest it has been in 15 years. There are also 1 million part time workers looking for full time work and a concerning statistic is that people in the 35-49 age group are the hardest hit.

The concern with this age group is that, these people usually represent the breadwinners of the family, paying of the mortgage and bills. In the last 3 months 85,000 people in this group have left their jobs, a drop of 0.8%, which is much higher than the 0.3% drop across all age groups. Although this cannot be classed as a trend yet, many people will be keeping a close eye on this statistic.

Brendan Barber, TUC general secretary, stated that her big concern is that the new government does not cut support for the unemployed. This is a particular concern in the public sector now, with £6 billion cost savings having to be found. However healthcare recruitment agencies will pleased to hear Cameron state that frontline services will not be affected by the cuts and the NHS overall will have a confirmed and committed spend levels over the next 5 years.

One more stat that was of interest from the ONS was that there was in fact an indication of wage growth. This grew by 4% on annual basis, from 2.5% last quarter, a sharp increase. Although strangely enough, it showed the private sector increase by 3.6%, whilst public sector wages grew by 4.4%, a situation that of course cannot be maintained.

Overall there is much to be concerned about and recruitment agencies in general should be able to give you a good indication of number of vacancies there are in your sector and what wage can be expected. The message got from all this, is that the new coalition government have got to get to work as soon as and I hope that the emergency budget being held in a few weeks time, will demonstrate how we as a country can cope in dealing with this very large debt.