Jobless figures to pass two million

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Some analysts are predicting it will reach 3.3 million before the jobs market recovers from the recession.

The number of people looking for work, including those not eligible for benefit, reached almost 1.98 million when the figures for the quarter to December were released last month.

New figures to be published on Wednesday by the Office for National Statistics are expected to show that more people are out of work since Labour came to power in 1997, when the total was just over two million.

Job losses have continued to mount across British industry in recent weeks, leading to fears that unemployment will soar well over three million next year on the International Labour Organisation (ILO) measure, which counts people not eligible for benefit.

Howard Archer, chief economist at Global Insight, said he expected this week's figures to show a rise of 176,000 for the three months to January, taking unemployment to 2.04 million.

He added that the unemployment rate was expected to jump to 6.6%, while predicting that the number of people claiming jobseeker's allowance increased by 90,000 in February, following a rise of 73,800 in January.

This would be the largest monthly increase since March 1991 and take claimant count unemployment up to 1.323 million. The claimant count unemployment rate is forecast to rise to 4.1% in February from 3.8% in January, he added.

"Reports of companies laying off workers are prevalent, while an increasing number of companies are folding. With the economy seemingly set to contract through 2009 and very possibly beyond before starting to recover gradually, we expect unemployment to rise to a peak of 3.3 million on the ILO measure around late-2010/early-2011.

"This would give an unemployment rate of around 10.5%."