Joblessness among younger people is already at a record high and economists warn that school leavers and graduates that failed to find work over the summer could push the official figures up further.
Youth unemployment reached 947,000 in the three months to July - the highest level since Office for National Statistics (ONS) records began in 1992.
One in five people in this age group was shown to be looking for work, as the jobless rate hit 19.7%.
Howard Archer, of IHS Global Insight, said the one-million mark could well have already been reached.
“This highlights the very worrying problem that youth unemployment is becoming,” he said.
Overall he expects unemployment to rise above 2.5 million from 2.47 million, with the number of new people without work slowing slightly to 140,000.
It is feared the jobless total will hit 3 million next year.
Professor David Blanchflower, a former member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) and labour market expert, was quoted saying that more should be done to stop youth unemployment rising further.
“I think unemployment for the under-25s is certain to go through one million, if not this month then next,” he said.
“The Government should do anything it can to stop young people being unemployed, including offering to pay them benefits while on internships.”
Chancellor Alistair Darling announced plans to avoid a generation of young people “abandoned to a future on the scrapheap” in this year’s Budget through a guaranteed job, training or work placement for all 18 to 24-year-olds who have been on the dole for 12 months.
Younger workers have been hit hard by the recession as many firms have implemented hiring freezes and cancelled their graduate training schemes.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article