The regional breakdown of the new UK unemployment figures reported yesterday shows how badly London is being hit. The Office for National Statistics bulletin (pdf) estimated that there are 406,000 unemployed people in the capital, which according to yesterday's Evening Standard is the first time the 400,000 barrier has been broken for 15 years. The figure represents 9.5% of London's economically active population - a higher proportion than in any other UK region except the north-east (where it is 10%) and far higher than for both England and the UK as a whole (7.9% in both cases).
The stats also indicate that unemployment in London is on a continuing upward trend. The new figures, which cover April to June of this year, show a 0.5% increase compared with the previous three months and a 0.3% increase compared with April to June of last year (see table 18.1, towards the bottom). The jobseeker's allowance claimant count figures too tell a bad news story. These figures are different from the unemployment ones, because not every unemployed person claims JSA. They show a rise in the numbers of both men a woman claiming JSA in July of this year by comparison with June (table 18.2).
The usual sorts of health warnings apply, such as not reading too much into a single set of data and remembering that it was only on Monday that the TUC was pointing out that jobs growth in London and the south-east was running ahead of other parts of the country. But in the context of the riots and their occurrence in parts of the capital where high levels of unemployment have been ingrained for years, thoughts - my thoughts, anyway - turn to how more job opportunities can be created in in those areas in particular.
With the financial sector seeming unlikely to grow fast for a while, where else will expansion take place? There's a familiar list: medicine, legal and accountancy services, culture, media, higher education and tourism. However, as the LSE's Tony Travers pointed out in a chat we had this morning, only the last of these tends to generate significant quantities of what are termed "entry level" jobs - the type accessible to people with limited qualifications who are probably most likely to have been strangers to the job market for some time.
What more can be done to help jobless Londoners, perhaps especially the young, stand a chance of securing such jobs as are available? How can more decent jobs that don't require high grade qualifications be generated? What more can London do to ensure that there is more employment among people living in its poorest neighbourhoods? Yes, you've heard those questions before. That's one reason why, right now, finding answers to them seems even more important than usual.