Kemi Badenoch’s claims about Labour’s unemployment record aren’t quite right—here’s why

Over the weekend Conservative party leader Kemi Badenoch repeated two claims we’ve seen before about Labour’s record on unemployment, both of which aren’t quite right.

Mrs Badenoch claimed in an interview with PA Media that unemployment has risen “every single month since Labour came into office”. As we’ve explained before, both the number of people who are unemployed and the rate of unemployment have risen overall since last July, but not in “every single month”.

And in a speech at her party’s conference, she said of the previous Labour government: “Like every Labour government in history, they left unemployment higher than they found it.” Again, while most Labour governments have left office with unemployment higher than when they entered, this isn’t true of “every Labour government in history”.

Unemployment under the current government

Office for National Statistics (ONS) Labour Force Survey figures show that between the period May-July 2024 (when the Conservatives left office) and May-July 2025 (the latest available data for the current government), the number of unemployed people increased by 194,000 to just over 1.67 million.

But these figures also show a number of small month-to-month decreases in the number of people unemployed during Labour’s time in government.

For example, the number of unemployed people fell from 1.507 million in the period July-September 2024 to 1.505 million in the period August-October 2024.

The rate of unemployment, meanwhile, has increased by 0.5 percentage points to 4.7%, according to the most up-to-date figures.

There are several months during which the unemployment rate has remained the same when rounded to one decimal place (as the headline figures are published), and looking at the unrounded figures suggests that some small decreases did take place (though unrounded figures are typically subject to more uncertainty).

We wrote to Mrs Badenoch asking her to correct this claim when she made it during Prime Minister’s Questions last month, but have received no response.

What about previous Labour governments?

Over the years we’ve seen a number of Conservatives claim that Labour governments always leave unemployment higher at the end of their time in office than it was at the start.

This is true of most Labour governments, including the two most recent ones prior to the current government (1997-2010 and 1974-1979), both of which saw unemployment increase.

These two are the only Labour governments covered by current unemployment data, but historic unemployment data, while not directly comparable with current data, suggests there’s at least one exception to this claim, with unemployment falling during the Labour minority government of 1924.

While not a “Labour government”, between May 1940 and May 1945 the Labour party was part of the wartime government led by Sir Winston Churchill, and this also left unemployment lower than when it came in. The unemployment rate dropped from 5.5% in May 1940 to 0.7% in May 1945 (in large part due to the war effort).

And it’s also worth noting that some Conservative governments have seen rises in unemployment.