(PTI): Despite reports showing a recovery in the British economy, unemployment in the country is to carry on rising at least until the summer of 2010.

The latest forecast from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) released Monday shows UK unemployment will peak at 2.8 million in 2010. The total number unemployed in the UK currently stands at 2.5 million, which is around 8 percent of the population.

The CIPD also warned that the number of job losses in the country will rise by 250,000 between the third quarter of this year and the second three months of 2010.

Meanwhile, the prediction is more optimistic than previous forecasts as earlier forecasts by the same business group said it expected unemployment to peak at 3.2 million as a result of the recession.

The group also predicts that another 250,000 jobs will be lost in Britain before unemployment starts to ease in 2010, but the number of people without work will remain high for years.

John Philpott, the CIPD’s chief economic adviser, says “a slower than expected recovery or stronger earnings growth would threaten to raise peak unemployment to at least three million.”

Philpott said “private sector employers will seek to contain wage costs in the coming years, while public sector employers will have to cope with the consequences of fast shrinking budgets and mass job downsizing.”