UK Unemployment Will Rise For Five Years, Warns CEBR

UK unemployment will rise across the country for the next five years, spurred by public sector job cuts, according to the Centre for Economic and Business Research (CEBR).

According to the think tank, a generally weaker economic outlook for a longer period in the UK, and revised jobless forecasts mean that only the affluent areas of London, the South East and East of England will escape the trend.

Five more years of pain are expected for much of the U.K., Rob Harbron, economist at the CEBR, said in the statement.

The outlook is tough for U.K. households, particularly those in places with a high dependency on public-sector employment. Family budgets are being squeezed between the pressures of rising unemployment, low earnings growth and stubbornly high inflation.

Areas heavily dependent on state employment such as Northern Ireland, Scotland and the North East will face the sharpest increases in joblessness, with as many as 13 percent of people unemployed in the North East by 2016.

Elsewhere, unemployment in the South East is expected to fall to 5.6 percent over the same period.

London, which is expected to become the number one private sector job-creator, is predicted to have an unemployment rate of 10.7 percent by 2016.

Last month, figures from the Office for National Statistics showed the unemployment rate had reached 8.3 percent, or 2.65 million people, across Britain.