SIR – The most important employment figures are not the massaged ones of about 2.6 million, but the true figure of people economically inactive (not working) which is 8.05 million.
These are official figures from the Office for National Statistics.
These include people who have taken early retirement, given up looking for work, on disability, students on various training schemes and 2.3 million who want a job but somehow aren’t included in Labour’s unemployment numbers.
Perhaps the saddest statistic is that 927,000 16 to 24-year-olds are still jobless.
With the Cadbury’s fiasco it is difficult to ascertain whose side Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson are on – certainly not the British worker and taxpayer.
Greg Meadows, Westfield Lane, Scholes
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