Economic recovery is gloomy, as the National Statistics Office (NSO) revealed unemployment grew by 38,000 to 2.49 million in the first quarter, according to official figures.

Among the gender group, women were badly hit, with 21,000 reaching to 1.05 million, who were unemployed during March to June. In total, redundancies among females increased by 32,000 to 154,000 in the first quarter.

The number of jobless youth, on the other hand, rose over the first quarter by 15,000 to 949,000 (20.2% aged 16-24). Job site Totaljobs.com director, John Salt, is concerned for the fresh wave of graduates and school leavers who will enter the jobs market for the first time, but is accepting the event as an inevitable consequence of the “recent decline in output in the UK manufacturing industry.”

The data also shows a growth of redundancy benefit claims in the last month from 37,100 to 1.56 million, the biggest since May 2009. The data also shows a rise of employment by 25,000 reaching 2.97 million, however, through part-time jobs. More and more people are finding it hard to look for a full time job, and will have no other options but to do part-time work, which reached 1.26 million in the first quarter.

Meanwhile, the number of job vacancies went down by 22,000 to 449,000 over the quarter, the lowest record since the previous three months to November.

Pay also rose by 2.2 percent, mainly from the private sector, the study shows. Last year, total wages plus which includes bonuses, grew to 2.6 percent from 2.3 percent in the last quarter.