THE NUMBER of people out of work in the Yorkshire and Humber region shot up by 24,000 in the three months to July, new figures have revealed.
Official figures show there are now 163,000 out of work in the region - an unemployment rate of 6.2 per cent, which is one of the highest in the country.
Nationally, unemployment has now reached its worst level for almost a decade.
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re 1.72m people out of work in the three months to July, up by 81,000 from the previous quarter and the highest total since the spring of 1999.
The number of people claiming jobseeker's allowance rose for the seventh month in a row in August, by 32,500 to 904,900 - the biggest monthly hike since December 1992.
The Office for National Statistics said the trend on both the claimant count and the wider number of jobless was increasing.
The number of workers in manufacturing continued to fall, down by 42,000 in the latest quarter to 2.87m, the lowest since records began 30 years ago.
There was also the first fall for more than a year in the UK's employment level, down by 16,000 to 29.54m in the three months to July.
Average earnings increased by 3.5 per cent in the year to July, up by 0.1 per cent from the previous month.
Wages grew by 3.3 per cent in the public sector compared with 3.5 per cent in private firms.
The number of days lost through industrial disputes in July was 363,000, the highest monthly total for more than two years, largely as a result of strikes by local government workers.
The TUC has warned that the number of people out of work for at least a year could almost double to 700,000 by the end of 2009.
