The unemployment rate has deteriorated further with 7.1 per cent of the workforce currently without a job, official figures have revealed.The latest Office for National Statistics labour market figures show there were 299,000 redundancies in the first quarter of 2009, and that the total number of people out of work is now 2.22 million. With one in six 18-24 year-olds already jobless, the figures are particularly bad news for young people entering the labour market this year.