Rising unemployment is yet more evidence that the youngest are hardest hit as Brexit costs mount

This is the latest sign that those starting their working lives will be affected most, writes James Moore

Unemployment has started to rise in Britain (Rex)

The latest set of labour market figures provided yet another example of City economists being overly optimistic about the future.

Official figures for June-August reveal that the unemployment rate came off a 45-year-low to land at 3.9 per cent. In real numbers, that’s 1.3m people out of work, a rise of 22,000.

Some other numbers: the number of people in work fell 56,000, or 0.2 percentage points, to 32.7 million. The difference between the two can be explained by the fact that there was also a rise in the number of “economically inactive” people. These include those who have retired, students, those looking after family or on long-term sick. Those classified as “unemployed” have to be actively seeking work.

Vacancies, meanwhile, were at their lowest level for nearly two years. These numbers took the City, derided as doomsdayers by Brexit’s increasingly unhinged backers, by surprise. They had expected a modest rise in employment. But the signs that the labour market is cooling off in response to Brexit, and the disastrous mishandling of it by Tory government, have been there for some time now.

They have been visible in the results put out by this country’s coterie of listed recruiters PageGroup, Robert Walters and Hays, for several months. Fortuitously, the ONS released its figures on the same day that the last of those gave an update on its performance just days after both of its peers had issued profit warnings.

Hays’ numbers weren’t actually as bad as had been feared. Overall fee income was more or less flat. But that was because its growing stable of international businesses were able to pick up some of the slack created by a marked weakness in, you’ve guessed it, the UK.

The company recorded a 4 per cent fall in net fees generated in its home market. Its mix of business is also worth paying attention to. Hays corps of headhunters did ok with placing people in temporary positions. Fee income from that was flat. That generated by placing people in from full-time roles was, however, down 8 per cent.

The UK’s labour market has proven surprisingly robust since the EU referendum and the consensus is that is because firms have hired people rather than investing in other things (business investment overall has fallen rather sharply). The former are, obviously, easier to get rid of, than, say, kit.

But the recruiters, and now the ONS’s figures, show that they’ve turned markedly cautious. Where they’re hiring they’re now more likely to do so on a temporary basis.

Of the official figures, Matt Hughes, head of Labour market for the Office for National Statistics (ONS), said this: “The employment rate is still rising year-on-year, but this growth has cooled noticeably in recent months.”

There was a sting in the tail from him too: “Among the under-25s, the employment rate has actually started to fall on the year.”

Young people, those who are just starting out, inevitably get hit first and hardest when the economy turns bad not least because they require investment on the part of employers to develop the skills they need.

Brexit looms large over all of this. The costs it is imposing on every man woman and child in this country are rising rapidly. Only those who deny reality deny this.

It’s often been pointed out that the people in charge of the project, like prime minister Boris Johnson, are largely wealthy individuals who will be able to weather a storm that will hit the most vulnerable the hardest.

The latest jobs data bears that out. When it comes to the labour market, young people are among the most vulnerable of all. They’ve been sold down the river by their Brexit-backing elders.