The unemployment figures released on 14 July 2010 show an increase of 148,000 in part-time jobs and a 12,000 increase in full-time jobs.  The conventional measure of unemployment used by the government based on the total of all jobs whether full or part-time is currently quoted as 7.8%, meaning that 92.2% of the workforce have jobs (usually reckoned to be those over 16 hours per week).

Since part-time jobs now constitute 27% of all jobs, a proportion which is increasing, a truer reflection of the labour marklet would be obtained if employment were quoted in terms of full-time equivalent jobs as is done in many businesses.

If we take the average part-time job to be 3 days per week, full-time equivalent jobs are only 82.2% of the workforce, not 92.2 % as on the conventional measure; if we took 4 days a week as the average (rather doubtful) then the full-time equivalent employment rate would be 87%.

All countries will look worse on this basis, but contrary to the common assumptions in Britain, the true employment position here is little diffeent from that in the Eurozone or the USA, and much worse than appears from the headline figures.

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