The eminently readable Edmund Conway over at the Telegraph has written a blog post looking at a wider measure of unemployment than the published claimant count or labour force survey measure. This measure of unemployment includes: official unemployment, those classed as economically inactive who actually want a job and part time workers who would rather be working full time. The evidence is that this measure has grown by over 1.2million since the start of 2008 and is now pushing 5.7 million. Details here.

This is part of a wider debate about the scale of under-employment in modern economies and also the economic and social costs of deep-rooted, persistent unemployment and economic inactivity.