The number of people unemployed in the UK has risen by 80,000 to 2.51m in the three months to July, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS.

The employment rate was 70.5%, with 29.17 unemployed people, while the unemployment rate was 7.9% and there were 2.51m unemployed people.

The industry has reacted mainly negatively to the news. Daniel Callaghan, founder of global recruiter MBA & Co, says: “As the latest jobs figures reveal, companies are employing more temporary and part-time workers, but the soon-to-be-implemented Agency Workers Regulations will bring with it an additional tax on employing those workers. This will have a huge financial impact on the many companies already strapped for cash in the current climate.

“The UK jobs market has been fairly resilient considering the poor state of the economy, but these figures are an ominous sign for the months ahead. Public sector job losses are continuing to weigh down on the recruitment market as a whole, and the private sector is no more willing to bear the brunt of this now than it was three months ago.”

Andrew Sissons, researcher at the Big Innovation Centre, based at The Work Foundation, says: “The labour market has taken a dramatic turn for the worse. With the economy barely growing over the last year, it was only a matter of time before we began to see a serious rise in unemployment.

“Young people have borne the brunt of this pain as they often lack the skills and experience to compete in what is an increasingly tough labour market.

“There can be no short-term fix for this rising unemployment. We are calling on the government to adopt a new approach to its economic policy, which focuses on putting in place the conditions for growth in the parts of the economy that have real potential to create new jobs. These range from existing strengths like healthcare and business services, to new growth areas such as the low-resource economy (eg renewable energy), the digital economy and ‘experiential’ services (improving consumer experience).”

Matthew Ogston, founder of UK recruitment website, Jobpage.com, says: “Across the market as a whole, the number of permanent positions available has certainly dropped off — but at the same time there has been a rise in the amount of contract work.

“In the current climate, companies are inclined to reduce risk and remain flexible and this is exactly what contract work offers them, even if it’s more expensive in the short term.

“What we are also noticing is that that many potential employees are being attracted to contract work, as it pays more and is often easier to secure than a full-time position. In a sense, contract work is a hedge for them too.”

Dr John Philpott, chief economic adviser at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), says: “It’s clear from the large quarterly fall in employment and very sharp rise in headline unemployment that the UK jobs market is weakening significantly and that we can expect unemployment to continue to rise well into next year.

“What’s most worrying is that the private sector jobs recovery has slowed markedly while the public sector jobs cull is accelerating rapidly. Indeed, the loss of public sector jobs in the second quarter of 2011 dwarfs what might have been expected from the current Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecast and is more in line with CIPD forecasts.  

“This suggests that the OBR may have to substantially revise its forecast for the employment and unemployment outlook to 2015, which will be bad news for the government as we enter a very uncertain period for the UK economy.”

Nigel Meager, director of the Institute for Employment Studies, says: “It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that policy-makers now need to stop sitting on their hands and start looking for ways to get spending power into the economy quickly.

“What we need now are interventions to address the immediate jobs deficit, which arises from lack of demand. Common sense suggests that stemming the loss of jobs will require some kind of fiscal stimulus (such as a VAT reduction), perhaps also coupled with a slowing of the pace of deficit reduction.”