Yesterday’s release record official unemployment at over 153,000 people, up more than 30,000 in past year.

Diving into the detail and, unfortunately, the picture is significantly more sombre than the headline.

Including all those without a job, but not making the ‘official’ status and those with a job but wanting more work (hours) and one gets a total of just under 400,000 people, up more than 45,000 in one year.

This is captured by the “underutilisation” figures from the survey figures, and as pictured are worse in absolute numbers than anything over past 20 years.

And to reinforce that the official number is only part of the story, much of the change in the labour market was swamped by the large rise in those colloquially labelled “not in the labour force”. In technical terms, the “labour force participation rate” has declined noticeably over the past year as many have decided (for a range of reasons) to exit (or not enter) the job market.

As an illustration, if the participation rate has remained unchanged, then the change in the labour force would have been about 40,000 over the year. As pictured, this scenario would have resulted in the official unemployment number rising by a catastrophic 73,000; with the total at 190,000 - or a rate of 6.2%.

So, thanks to those staying not entering the labour force (or exiting) over the past year, the picture can be reported as bad, rather than as catastrophic.