Fidelity: Unemployment shows UK economy still 'sick'

Fidelity's Tom Stevenson discusses the ‘distressing' element of today's unemployment figures and why the Chancellor is walking a tightrope ahead of the Budget.

Depressing statistics The Government is walking a tightrope ahead of next week's Emergency Budget. On the one hand it faces pressure from the international financial markets to reduce the size of the deficit. On the other hand, as today's unemployment figures confirm, the economy remains in the sick bay and overdoing the speed and scale of the fiscal consolidation threatens to push it back into intensive care. Today's rise in unemployment to 2.47m in the three months to April, up by 23,000 for an unemployment rate of 7.9%, won't be the end of it either. The 7,000 reduction in publ...