DAVID CAMERON was wrong-footed yesterday after new figures revealed rising youth unemployment a day after he bragged about plans to make youngsters work for free.

New official job figures also revealed that pay is in danger of slipping back into stagnation  and the TUC has warned that it will take until the end of the next Parliament for wages to recover their lost value.

Despite a 97,000 fall in overall unemployment in the last quarter, bringing official jobless figures to 1.86 million, the three months to December saw dole queues swell by an extra 3,000 young people.

Labour employment spokesman Stephen Timms said the rise in youth unemployment was “extremely worrying” and TUC young members vice-chair Anthony Curley branded the figures a “disgrace.”

“The coalition government has failed a generation of young people,” he blasted.

On Tuesday Mr Cameron unveiled plans to force so-called Neets (young people not in education, employment or training, who are not included in official unemployment figures) to work in community payback-style voluntary positions.

Samantha Ritchie, who chairs Unite’s young members committee in Scotland, told the Star that Mr Cameron’s proposals were an insult to “what the welfare state was set up to do.”

And she warned the problems did not stop at the workplace door.

“More young people than ever are on zero-hours contracts, and young people are being exploited at work,” she added.

Pay rose 2.1 per cent in the year to December — but only by 1.7 per cent when bonuses are excluded from calculations, a small decline on the 1.8 per cent figure from the previous month.

And while the number of part-timers seeking full-time work decreased, there are still a whopping 1.3 million Britons struggling to get by in part-time roles.

GMB general secretary Paul Kenny said the recovery should be “much further ahead than it is.”

“Most workers have seen little or no evidence of any recovery in living standards due to the Tories wasting their time in office by not promoting real economic growth based on investment and productivity gains,” he said.

On Monday Labour unveiled plans to guarantee an apprenticeship to every school leaver who makes the grade — but under minimum wage exemptions the new recruits could be paid as little as £2.73 an hour.

conradlandin@peoples-press.com