UK unemployment rose by 118,000 to 2.7m in the three months to November 2011 and some forecasters are predicting that the number won't peak until 2013.
While the coalition government has claimed that the private sector will provide extra jobs, Unite claims that this will not happen and it is in fact a rebirth of the UK manufacturing sector that will boost employment.
General secretary Len McCluskey reiterated long-held claims by the union that putting "demand" back into the economy can be achieved by changes such as cutting the 20% VAT rate.
He said: "The government’s stewardship of the economy has been revealed as deeply flawed. The coalition’s dead end economic policies may please the self-interested City elite, but for real people in real communities they are a tragedy – a national disgrace.
"Once again, young people, aged 18 to 24, are bearing the brunt of George Osborne’s cruel and blinkered economic and fiscal policies that have drained demand from the economy. The next generation is being sacrificed on the altar of economic Thatcherite orthodoxy."
