Britannia Radio

From The Sunday Times

February 8, 2009

Professions head the dole queue

Robert Watts

Click here for a list of hardest hit professions

HIGH-EARNING professionals such as architects, quantity surveyors and lawyers are joining the dole queue at a faster rate than any other type of worker, new figures reveal.

The number of tax advisers, commercial pilots and underwriters out of work and claiming benefits has also more than doubled in a year, according to analysis by the Office for National Statistics.

Economists believe that top earners who escaped the full brunt of previous recessions are among those hardest hit.

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“In the 1980s it was blue-collar unemployment; in the 1990s it was white-collar unemployment,” said Graeme Leach, chief economist at the Institute of Directors. “In this recession we’re seeing something new and equally dramatic: high-income unemployment.

“These are individuals with very nice houses and two children in private schools who are suddenly seeing their standard of living plummet. This will be one of the hallmarks of this recession,” he said.

More than 1.1m people were out of work and claiming benefits by the start of December – up from 787,000 the previous year.

On Thursday, official unemployment data is expected to show that the number of claimants rose by a further 89,000 during December.

Although thousands of shop workers and factory staff have lost their jobs in recent months, the growth of unemployment in these blue-collar jobs has been proportionally slower than more typically middle-class vocations.

The analysis shows that the number of quantity surveyors on benefit increased more rapidly than any other profession, rising from 100 to 590 during 2008. The number of architects out of work and claiming job-seekers’ allowance rose by 432% to 1,490.

Middle-aged workers are among the recession’s biggest victims. Tomorrow’s edition of Dispatches on Channel 4 will highlight a 30% increase in unemployment among those aged over 50 during the last quarter of 2008, while joblessness among 25 to 49-year-olds rose by only 5%. A poll for the programme shows that more than one in 10 people have encountered age discrimination at work.

Additional reporting: Abul Taher