Unemployment figures continue to rise with women in the retail sector work force being hardest hit

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Unemployment figures continue to rise with women in the retail sector work force being hardest hit

Figures to be announced later today are expected to show that UK unemployment figures are expected to rise by around 85,000 in December, 10,000 more than the previous month. These less than encouraging figures continue to point to projections that unemployment figures of three and a quarter million by the end of 2010 may well be accurate.

Despite the UK government's sterling attempts to re-inflate the economy, firms are looking to reduce their overheads as much as possible to ride out the recession. One way they are looking to achieve their goal is to cut their staff back to the minimum. The government's hope that Monday's injection of finance to banks will allow them to ease their lending restrictions and in turn allow UK companies to hang on to as many trained staff as possible.

Analysis of current unemployment figures continue to show that the number of women being made redundant is almost twice as many as men in the workforce.

This statistic is particularly worrying as increasingly more families are becoming dependant on joint salaries. The sectors particularly hard hit were in leisure and entertainment as well as retailing, where the higher percentage of job holders is women. One encouraging note in favour of equality in the workplace is that in one in five of families where both partners are wage earners, the female earns more than the male.

TUC general secretary Brendan Barber urged the government to take specific measures to ensure unemployed women received the support they needed to get back into work.

Women's employment has increased significantly over the past 30 years, while it has fallen for men, according to the research.

Meanwhile, a separate study by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development showed employers were shedding temporary or agency workers.

Among them was luxury clothing retailer Burberry who announced they would be cutting 290 jobs cutting their overheads by an annual 35 million pounds?

One the retailing front, the toy retailing group Argos has announced that they have purchased the rights to the Chad Valley brand of toys from Woolworth's administrator Deloitte, paying five million pounds in cash. Argos, the UK's largest toy retailer is reluctant to see the Chad Valley name disappear into history. Company marketing experts claimed that Chad Valley was part of a very strong heritage that would ideally complement Argos's image in the toy marketplace.

On Monday Woolworths Group also announced that talks regarding the sale of its stake in its DVD publishing joint venture with BBC Worldwide (regarding the sale of 2Entertain) were still ongoing.

On the retail clothing front, fashion retailer Primark announced that they had overtaken Asda as the UK's leading low-price clothing retailer. According to a recent report Primark), increased its market share from 16.5 percent to an estimated 17.7 percent during 2008. While Asda only succeeded in increasing its market share from 16.9 percent to an estimated 16.94 percent.