A rise in the number of people working part-time is buoying the job market and masking true unemployment figures, employers’ bodies have warned.

Although experts had predicted that unemployment would top three million before the end of 2009, latest figures have revealed that around 2.5 million people are currently out of work.

The data from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) revealed there had been a rise of 21,000 jobless in the three months to October – the smallest increase in the number of unemployed people since May 2008 .

But employers’ bodies warned that company measures to stave off redundancies – such as shorter working weeks and part-time hours – were clouding true jobless figures.

ONS research showed that there were just over one million employees and self-employed people working part-time because they could not find a full-time job.

This is the highest figure since records began in 1992, and is up 34,000 on the quarter.

John Philpott, chief economic adviser at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) warned that private sector employment was still falling, with signs of improvement confined to the retail and hospitality sectors, which were generating only part-time jobs.

“The number of people working full-time is still shrinking at a fairly rapid pace, with the number working part-time because they can’t find a full-time job now officially above one million,” Mr Philpott said.

“The emergence of ‘part-time Britain’ is good insofar as it helps to keep the lid on headline unemployment, but is an underlying sign of the pain still being inflicted on the UK workforce by the recession.”

A spokesman for manufacturers body the EEF told Personnel Today: “Clearly there’s been a partnership between employees, employers and trade unions to ensure that employees have taken what could have previously been considered unpalatable measures to retain jobs such as reducing hours and taking pay cuts.

“It just shows the scale of problem we faced in a short period of time. Almost all those factors have meant we haven’t perhaps seen the apocalyptic levels of unemployment that some people were predicting at start of recession.”

Personnel Today