Treasury has released its December Economic and Fiscal Update (DEFU), which includes a lower growth forecast and a sharp increase in the forecasts for both unemployment and the government's budget deficit.
Based on a suggestion from one of our readers and commenters, Andy Hamiltion, we are keeping a tally of reported job losses, as an early-warning guide to the actual scale of them in 2009 and beyond.
It is Treasury's forecast that the unemployment rate will jump to 6.5% in 2010.
"The unemployment rate is expected to increase to 6.5% mid-way through the 2010 calendar year, with the seasonally adjusted number of people unemployed expected to peak at 146,000 in June 2010, up 69,000 from December 2007 when unemployment was at a recent low." they said in that Report.
As Andy Hamilton pointed out, we don't get to see the official unemployment data until six weeks or so after the end of each calendar quarter. And that is a long time to wait.
Our tally may give an early indication of how tough it is actually getting.
We are asking readers to help keep this initiative up-to-date by adding notes and comments below.
We will enter them in the tally, here ». And, of course, we will be graphing the results weekly.
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