The post you are reporting:
Unemployment up as stay-at-home mothers head back to the job centre
The major driving force behind the rise in the jobless rate was an increase in women who
had previously been looking after the family or home but are now actively seeking work,
making them officially unemployed.
The number of people without jobs between December and February rose 70,000 to 2.56 million
on the previous three months, taking the overall unemployment rate up to 7.9 per cent, according
to the Office for National Statistics.
The number of women who look after the family or home fell to 2.06 million in the latest three-month
period, the lowest estimate on record.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) think-tank attributed this trend to the gradual increase in the
state pension age for women, which has risen from 60 to 61 years and six months.
A greater number of older women are remaining in the workforce, or returning to seek paid work,
out of economic necessity, the IFS says.
Younger women are also entering the available work force in greater numbers.
The number of women aged 25 to 34 who are "economically active" increased by 101,000 on a year earlier
. Richard Clegg, an employment statistician at the ONS, suggested that this trend might be attributable
to the Government's welfare reforms, which have increased the incentive for women with children in that
age group to seek paid employment.
Ministers have cited the fact that job numbers have been rising and unemployment numbers falling since
the autumn of 2011 as evidence that, despite the threat of a triple-dip recession, their economic plans
have been bearing fruit.
But the latest figures showing a reversal of those trends last night intensified the pressure on the
****** Chancellor to follow the advice of the International Monetary Fund and to slow the pace of his spending cuts**************.
