The Guardian have added together the number of unemployed people and the number who aren't working or looking for work to contrive a 6,000 increase in unemployment and claiming it is a sign that the economy is slowing down because of Brexit. They've even rolled out their fellow Project Fear propaganda merchants, the CBI, to back them up.
During the same 3 month period that unemployment has gone down by 16,000, net immigration will have been around 84,000. That's also about the same number of people who came here in the last 12 months looking for work so from that we can infer that about a quarter of net immigration is unemployed people, or about 21,000 net unemployed immigrants in the last quarter. That means a real terms, net increase of about 37,000 jobs in the last 3 months.
The CBI knows this, of course, which is why they chose to gloss over the employment figures and criticise the 2.6% increase in average salaries which is higher than they predicted. The CBI says this is hitting works in the pocket despite inflation currently sitting at 1.2%, less than half the average increase in earnings.
The British Chambers of Commerce, which was officially neutral on the EU referendum but sacked its Chief Executive for privately expressing support for Brexit, has also chimed in to predict that unemployment will increase to 5.5% by early 2018 despite being on a downward trend throughout the period of uncertainty caused by the lack of planning for a Brexit vote.
Project Fear's "experts" have been getting it wrong for so long it's a wonder they're given any credibility whatsoever but with so much of the establishment media having staked their reputations on things going horribly wrong it's understandable that they're desperate for anything they can spin negatively to vindicate their discredited position on Brexit.
wonkotsane is an author at Bloggers4UKIP.
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