Unemployment levels in the UK are predicted to increase next year, according to the Trades Union Congress (TUC), despite some suggestions that the end of the recession is in sight.
It is believed that job losses will continue until autumn 2010 as businesses put any expansion plans on hold until they feel confident the economy is well on the way to recovery.
The TUC’s general secretary Brendan Barber said that for this reason tackling unemployment needed to remain the government’s top priority.
As well as being of the benefit of the two million people currently out of work in the UK, he noted that such actions could also boost the economy.
“Even if [reports of recovery are] not a false dawn, as others fear, it will be years before the thousands of people who have lost their jobs or who will lose them in months to come will see anything to celebrate,” Mr Barber claimed.
Research by the Globalisation and Economic Policy Centre, based at Nottingham University, recently revealed that workers who have found themselves the subjects of redundancies may have to wait for up to five years until their salary matches their income before they lost their job.
