UK governments plan to create more internships - The UK government is planning on giving unemployed graduates three month paid internships as a way of increasing skills, work experience and reducing unemployment.

Banks keen to employ graduates - Banks are keen to continue to employ the best young graduates whilst continuing to cut the jobs of more experienced staff. Graduates are proving attractive to banks as a cheap source of labour that will be available and ready for when the markets recover.

Help for long term jobless - The UK government announces plans to tackle long-term jobless, i.e. those unemployed for over six months. Unlikely to be a significant change in policy as tackling long-term unemployment has been a stated goal of the government since 1997.

Obama jobs stimulus plan - It is estimated that Obama's fiscal stimulus could create four million new jobs. It is hard to see how this figure has been calculated and will almost certainly be way off.



US unemployment increases to 7.2%, half million jobs lost in December - US unemployment surged to a 16-year high of 7.2 percent as a deepening recession pushed employers to shed a massive 524,000 jobs in December, capping a yearly loss of 2.6 million, data showed Friday.

Friday sees the release of the US Labor Department's monthly jobs data which is likely to show that the number of jobs lost in in the US during 2008 was the highest since 1945.

According to the median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg an additional 500,000 jobs were lost in December, resulting in a cumulative reduction in headcount of 2.4 million in the year.

Despite Barack Obama's grand plan for an extensive fiscal stimulus, the US economy will continue to slash jobs throughout at least the first half of 2009 and for possibly longer.

The unemployment rate, which stood at 6.7% in November, is likely to have climbed to 7% in December, the highest level since 1993. It would not be surprising to see this figure edge towards double digit figures especially if the fiscal stimulus and cuts to interest rates don't have the desired effect.