Unemployment has risen under Labour - but it hasn’t gone up ‘every single month’

The leader of the opposition Kemi Badenoch has repeatedly claimed that under Labour unemployment has “gone up every single month”, and in recent days we’ve seen a number of other Conservative MPs make the same claim.

This is not correct. The number of people who are unemployed and the unemployment rate have both seen some small monthly decreases during Labour’s time in office, though both have increased overall since the general election.

We’ve asked Ms Badenoch and the Conservative party about her claim but haven’t had a response. We will update this fact check if we receive one.

What’s been claimed?

We’ve heard this claim a number of times from Ms Badenoch in the past few weeks, including most recently at this week’s Prime Minister’s Questions, when she claimed: “Unemployment has gone up every single month under this Labour government.”

On 12 August, she was quoted as telling reporters that “Labour has presided over unemployment rising every single month since they came into office”. She also said similar in Conservative party videos on 27 August and 3 September.

Other Conservative politicians have also made similar claims this week, including shadow chancellor Mel Stride MP, Lord Sharpe of Epsom and Jerome Mayhew MP.

Ms Badenoch has previously made a different version of this claim which is more accurate, however. On 5 July she posted on X that Labour had “overseen a rise in unemployment almost every single month that they’ve been in office”—which isn’t quite the same as the claim she’s made more recently.

Measuring unemployment

Unemployment figures are typically based on data from the Labour Force Survey (LFS), published as three-month averages by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The ONS has previously told us that if a particular month is of interest, it would usually choose a period where that month is the midpoint (so for example using the period June-August 2024 when looking at July 2024).

It’s worth noting this data has been subject to some uncertainty recently due to lower than usual response rates to the survey since the pandemic.

We’ve written in more detail about how employment, unemployment and jobs are measured in our explainer.

Number of people unemployed

ONS Labour Force Survey figures show that overall the number of people unemployed increased by approximately 192,000 between May-July 2024, around the time Labour came to office, and April-June 2025, the most recent period for which figures are available.

But they 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.

There were also two consecutive decreases towards the end of 2024, with a fall from 1.560 million in the period September-November to 1.552 million in the period October-December, and then again to 1.545 million in the period November 2024-January 2025.

And the most recent figures also show a slight decrease, from 1.673 million in the period March-May 2025 to 1.672 million in the period April-June 2025.

Unemployment rate

The Conservatives didn’t respond when we asked them about this claim, but a video in which Ms Badenoch makes the claim appears to suggest it’s based on the unemployment rate. A graph shown as she speaks [53 seconds in] is headed “unemployment rate”, and while no source is given, the data points appear to broadly match the findings of the Labour Force Survey.

However this data also does not show that unemployment increased “every single month” under Labour.

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).

For example, the headline unemployment rate remained at 4.4% for four consecutive three-month averages between September-November 2024 and December 2024-February 2025, but the unrounded figures suggest the rate slightly decreased in two of these periods.

For example, the unrounded unemployment rate was 4.4133% in the period September-November, and 4.3820% in the period October-December.

However, as with the number of people unemployed, the unemployment rate has increased overall since Labour came into government, from 4.1% to 4.7%.

Again, it’s worth noting that the figures above for the number of unemployed people and the unemployment rate are both estimates based on Labour Force Survey data, which the ONS has said should be treated with caution. But the available data we do have does not support Ms Badenoch’s claim.

Other measures

As our explainer notes there are a number of different ways to look at the number of people in or out of work. But none of these measures support Ms Badenoch’s claim.

In addition to the Labour Force Survey we can look at the claimant count, which measures the number of people claiming benefits due to unemployment. This has also seen an overall increase since Labour took office, but has similarly seen a number of monthly decreases within this period.

We’ve also seen some suggestions that decreases in the number of payrolled employees mean the number of unemployed people has increased—but this isn’t necessarily the case.

While some people who were previously employees may now be unemployed, others may have become economically inactive, or self-employed. And in any event, while payrolled employment has fallen overall, it has increased in some months since last July.