AS Treasury Minister Philip Ozouf has said, Jersey is in a better position than many communities to cope with the effects of the recession. This is because although budgetary deficits loom, we have no significant public debt and cash in hand.

However, that relatively cheerful picture is painted with the broadest of brushes. It does not delineate the effect on individuals hardest hit by these recessionary times. In particular, those out of a job are likely to take a jaundiced view of Senator Ozouf’s concentration on the silver lining in the economic cloud.

This is not to suggest that the Senator is either unaware or unsympathetic where unemployment is concerned. In spite of this, the latest Island figures, made public yesterday, may have helped him focus afresh on the human dimension of the economic downturn.

Although there are signs that the recession is ending both in the Island and the UK – where, incidentally, the latest job figures were encouraging – the States Statistics Unit reports that unemployment here has hit a record high. At the end of February the level had risen by a shocking ten per cent and the total number of people seeking work was 1,320.

It is true that exceptional factors such as the recent loss of jobs at Kleinwort Benson because its parent bank is no longer in the global top 500 have contributed to the present alarming figures. Nevertheless, there are deeper recession-linked trends which should prove temporary but are still greatly to be regretted.

It is, for example, of concern that almost a quarter of those without jobs are teenagers. In the past, young people were able to walk straight out of school and into work. Belt-tightening in the finance industry and many other sectors has put paid to that happy state of affairs.

Also of concern are the long-term unemployed. Eight per cent of the jobless have been in that state for a year or more. A very small proportion might be content with their situation, but many will be suffering the depression, frustration, lack of self esteem and demoralisation that are so often the result of hunting for work without success.

Higher levels of economic activity can be expected to reverse current trends, but there is at least one other reason to expect favourable change. This is based not on the haphazard swings and roundabouts of market forces but on government intervention through the £44 million fiscal stimulus package, which must offer hope for individual jobseekers and the economy as a whole.