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UK’s long-term youth unemployment hits record high

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The number of British young people in long-term unemployment has hit its highest level in more than 20 years, new official figures show.

According to the statistics from the Labour Force Survey (LFS), the number of under-25s without a job for a year or more increased from 266,000 in 2012 to 282,000 in September 2013, British national tabloid newspaper The Daily Mirror reported on Saturday.

Last year’s figure is just under the 285,000 recorded in 1993, when John Major was British Prime Minister.

The LFS is a survey of the employment circumstances of the UK population and provides the official measures of employment and unemployment.

British Shadow Minister for Employment Stephen Timms accused the coalition government of failing the young jobless while giving tax cuts to the wealthy.

“These shocking figures show how the Tories are completely failing to tackle the long-term unemployment faced by hundreds of thousands of young people,” Timms said.

Earlier this month, a poll found that around 32 percent of jobless Britons aged between 16 and 25 had thought about taking their own lives whilst about 24 percent had self-harmed

The YouGov poll for the youth charity The Prince’s Trust also revealed that some 9 percent of Britain’s jobless youngsters believe they “have nothing to live for.”

Moreover, long-term unemployed young people were found to be more than twice as likely as their peers to have been prescribed anti-depressants.

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