The following figures are taken from the Office for National Statistics and reflect the total number of people claiming Job Seekers Allowance across the United Kingdom as of March 12th 2009, they do not include people claiming the range of other out of work benefits in the UK.

        

You may have recently been made redundant and facing your first visit to a Jobcentre Plus office. And no doubt you’ve read all the recent newspaper articles about how bad the Jobcentre Plus network is but it’s not always as bad as it seems.

        

We’ve all read the stories of employers hitting the Google search button on people they are interested in employing and we’ve also read the stories about people being sacked for comments they make on Social Networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace.