Labour are spinning the latest unemployment figures.
Ed Miliband MP, Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Labour Party, said:
"Month after month unemployment goes up.
"This is a crisis but the Government simply carries on with more of the same - an economic strategy that isn't working.
"A further rise in youth unemployment is a particular concern. Long-term youth unemployment is now double what it was a year ago.
"Instead of this dangerous complacency, the Government should be providing real hope to young people.
"They should be taxing the bankers' bonuses and using the money to help young people back to work."
Lets look at the 'month after month' increase in unemployment.
From the ONS figures:
Total in employment
Q3 29,068,520
Q4 29,128,872
Change: +60,352
Thats right, there are 60,000 more people working now than in the last reported quarter, or about 20,000 more people per month in work.
Total unemployed
Q3 2,622,449
Q4 2,670,687
Change: +48,238
There are more people unemployed, or about 12,000 more people per month looking for work.
More people are working at the same time as more people are unemployed. The difference can be explained by a growing number of people being classed as economically active. The British people are returning to the job market. That is a good thing because we need everybody to pull their weight if we are to dig ourselves out of the pit that Labour left the country in.
Many of these were previously on disability benefits and Ed Miliband is fighting welfare reforms that help people out of benefit dependency and back into work. Work is the way out of poverty, and Labour are again showing that when they say that "Labour are the party of the poor" they mean that they make you poor.
These numbers show that the economic policies are working. Now what we need to do is to start creating jobs and stop losing the ones that we have.
Ed Miliband thinks the solution is to attack bankers. He is actually attacking the financial services industry.
In the last year banks shed jobs as the economic conditions deteriorated and politicians started to single them out as predators.
Lets look at some of the bank jobs cuts announced in the past year:
| HSBC | 30000 |
| BANK OF AMERICA | 30000 |
| LLOYDS BANKING GROUP | 15000 |
| UNICREDIT | 6150 |
| ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND | 5500 |
| CITIGROUP | 4500 |
| UBS | 3500 |
| CREDIT SUISSE | 3500 |
| BARCLAYS | 3500 |
| INTESA SANPAOLO | 3000 |
| MIZUHO | 3000 |
| ING | 2700 |
| CREDIT AGRICOLE | 2350 |
| ABN AMRO | 2350 |
| MONTE DEI PASCHI DI SIENA | 2,200 |
| NORDEA | 2000 |
| DANSKE BANK | 2000 |
| BNP PARIBAS | 1769 |
| MORGAN STANLEY | 1600 |
| SOCIETE GENERALE | 1580 |
| BANK OF NEW YORK MELLON | 1500 |
| RABOBANK | 1200 |
| BANCO POPOLARE | 1120 |
| GOLDMAN SACHS | 1000 |
| JPMORGAN | 1000 |
| NOMURA | 1,000 |
| DEUTSCHE BANK | 500 |
They are not the only job losses - they are just a selection that I found from a quick googling. There were many more financial sector job losses that were never announced or are not in that list.
These figures are not all in London, but many of them are because London is one of the top global financial centres. Many of them are at closed branches or regional call centres. People all over the country are suffering because of attacks on the banking sector.
There are many more lost jobs down the supply chain because the bank staff were no longer spending money. How many Star Bucks or London restaurants are suffering because their customers work in financial services?
If you add up the numbers I am pretty certain that the number would come out as over 12,000 per year.
If you think about it, if the financial services industry was not suffering from job losses then unemployment would be falling, not "rising month on month" by 12,000.
Ed Miliband wants to make the banks suffer more. He would trade destroying financial service jobs for a good headline.
What he doesn't tell you is how that destroys lower paid jobs like bank clerks, waiters or dish washers. Many of those dish washers are young people starting out in the world of work.
What Ed Miliband doesn't tell you is how attacking bankers means that getting loans for small businesses is harder. What he doesn't tell you is how many jobs for young workers are not being created because of attacks on "predatory" banks.
We need a working financial services industry. We need working banks. We need them to get our young people into work.
This is why Labour doesn't work. They use the politics of envy to attack bankers but fail to see the damage that they do to normal people trying to make ends meet.
Attacking bankers is hurting banks. Hurting banks is causing unemployment. This populist "politics of envy" must stop if our economy is to recover and prosper in the future.
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