Job losses hit 12-year high
Updated on 17 June 2009
Unemployment in Britain has reached a 12-year high of more than 2.2m after a record number of people lost their jobs in recent months.
The total number of jobless rose by 232,000 in the three months to April, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics.
And the total number of people in work has dropped by more than a quarter of a million - the largest quarterly fall since comparable records began in 1971.
Yvette Cooper, the recently appointed Work and Pensions Secretary explains how long she thought it would take for the economy to start recovering.
