U.K. unemployment rises to 7.6 percent

LONDON, England (CNN) - The unemployment rate in Britain has risen to 7.6 percent, the British government announced Wednesday.

The figure of 7.6 percent is for the three months to May 2009. That is up 0.9 percentage points from the previous three months, the government said, and up 2.4 percentage points from a year earlier.

The rate was slightly higher than many economists had predicted.

The latest U.S. figures show the unemployment rate at 9.5 percent in June.

In Britain, the number of unemployed people was 2.38 million in the three months to May 2009, up 281,000 from the previous three months and up 753,000 from a year earlier, the government said.

"There are some early signs that the flow into unemployment may be easing a little," said Nigel Meager, director of the Institute for Employment Studies, "but what's happened is that a lot of people who entered unemployment in the last year are entering long-term unemployment."

There are big increases in the number of people who have been unemployed for six to 12 months or longer, he said. Such a trend has happened in previous recessions, he said, and is a problem because the long-term unemployed suffer negative effects on their health and future employabililty, Meager said.