Many analysts expects the jobless number to rise this year due to public sector job cuts UK unemployment rose by 49,000 to 2.5 million in the three months to the end of November, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has said.
One in five 16 to 24-year-olds are now out of work, after a rise of 32,000 to 951,000 without jobs, the highest figure since records began in 1992.
Despite the rise, the unemployment rate in the UK remained unchanged at 7.9%.
The number of people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance in December fell by 4,100 to 1.46 million, the ONS said.
Other data from the ONS showed that average earnings had risen by 2.1% in the year to November.
Male unemployment increased by 43,000 in the three months to November to reach 1.48 million, while female unemployment rose by 6,000 to 1.02 million. There were 157,000 redundancies, up by 14,000.
Most analysts, as well as the government, expect the unemployment total to continue rising, in large part due to the public sector spending cuts designed to cut the budget deficit.
“At the headline level, [the jobless data] is fairly predictable,” said Ross Walker at RBS Financial Markets.
“There is no significant change going on but there is a sense that the labour market is not showing any surge in activity a year into recovery. The underlying picture is still fairly subdued.”
On Tuesday, the Institute of Public Policy Research warned that the UK faced a double-dip in employment, with the jobless level expected to rise during 2011.
The think tank said that the UK economy was not growing fast enough to bring down unemployment.
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