Others speculated that the enhanced legal rights would lead to a rise in unemployment.
They find that a country with an average level of all eight labour-market rigidities would have seen a rise in unemployment of 7.2 percentage points since 1960.
Employment and Welfare Reform Minister Stephen Timms MP denies that the one million target will only be reached through a rise in unemployment - that many will simply be shifted off the sick and onto other benefits.
More importantly, there have been more pessimistic assessments of the forthcoming changes in the jobs market, forecasts of a rise in unemployment, and a fear that the real value of earnings could fall as price increases exceed adjustments in earnings.
The bursting of the Japanese bubble a decade ago did not lead immediately to sharp contractions in output or a significant rise in unemployment.
In this recession there has been a sharp fall for the first time in financial sector employment and a rapid rise in unemployment in London and the Southeast.
However, there is a danger that, when labour markets are gummed up, a cyclical rise in unemployment can turn into a structural one making it impervious to an economic upturn.
It comes ahead of official statistics which are expected to show a further rise in unemployment.
This was a decline of 49.4%, and was accompanied by a sharp rise in unemployment and plunging commodity prices.
At first blush, a rise in the unemployment rate sounds like bad news.
These conditions are likely to lead to real economic pain, including many corporate bankruptcies and a rapid rise in unemployment.
Unless the government is prepared to accept a sharp rise in unemployment, the FDP's neo-liberals will have to swallow their economic principles and accept more market-distorting state intervention.
Germany's Federal Labor Agency predicts a sharp rise in unemployment this fall, with the number of people on the dole climbing to 4.5 million next year from about 3.4 million now.
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Though few analysts expect a sharp rise in employment (November's jobs figures are due to be released on December 6th), the fear that a sharp rise in unemployment would undermine consumption has abated.
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Or a rise in the unemployment rate.
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The impact on the Social Security system of a 1% rise in unemployment is far greater than that of a 1% increase in the inflation rate.
We will experience this as a fall in the unemployment rate, a rise in capital goods orders and a rise in capacity utilization.
These writeoffs will lead to more corporate bankruptcies and a further rise in domestic unemployment.
And a country with highly co-ordinated wage bargaining would have seen a fourfold bigger rise in unemployment than one with highly decentralised bargaining.
Today's figures show the number of people in work rose by 80, 000 over the three months to April, alongside a significant fall in the broader measure of unemployment and a smaller rise in the claimant count.
In Europe, where strong earnings results were offset by a record rise in euro-zone unemployment, the Stoxx Europe 600 gave up 0.2%.
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Barclays is a bit more cautious, forecasting a 150, 000 rise in nonfarm payrolls and a decline in the unemployment rate to 7.8%.
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Mr Hibbert said the rise in users was despite recent figures showing a fall in unemployment.
"Half of the country saw yet another rise in unemployment, nearly half a million people have been on the dole for more than a year, and youth unemployment rose, " he said.
"The rise in unemployment is a key factor, " says Chie K. Ngu, a banking analyst with TA Securities in Kuala Lumpur.
Whoever is right, it is the rise in unemployment in a country unused to it which puts the government under pressure.
In the Middle East, unemployment is on the rise again after a decline in the 2000s.
Some 57, 000 of the latest rise in unemployment is due to a fall in economic inactivity.
However, the number of people in NI claiming unemployment-related benefits increased to 61, 400 in February, a rise of 0.3%.
European stocks were weaker Thursday and the Euro currency fell following a reported drop in German retail sales and rise in German unemployment.
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