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The shadow work and pensions secretary has said that figures released today showing a rise in the number of people unemployed make for "very worrying reading."
Theresa May said unemployment is at the highest it has been for 16 years and that the "number of people in jobs was actually falling."
May argued that Labour's policies were not working and that there couldn't be a "crazier time to introduce a job tax."
On unemployment, the shadow work and pensions secretary reiterated that those who can work, must work, or lose benefits.
At the Conservative Party press conference this morning shadow business secretary, Ken Clarke said the unemployment figures "bring home the problems of the economic crisis."
Unemployment in the UK rose by 43,000 in the three months to February to more than 2.5 million, the highest it has been since Labour came to power.
The number of people out of work is at its highest since 1994.
The central question, Clarke argued, was how to get the economy moving.
He announced that 1,100 small and medium sized businesses had signed a letter announcing that Labour's job tax would "kill industry".
For Clarke, it was a "no brainer" that they should not put a tax on small businesses. This was, he explained, his guiding principles when he was chancellor.
The shadow business secretary said that Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg's father was a City banker and "quite definitely" a Tory supporter. He claimed Clegg had "gone off into the strange wastelands" of politics.
Clarke predicted that the Conservatives would win the election pointed out that in 1970 polls indicated the Tories would lose and they went on to win.
Also at this morning's press conference, the shadow Chancellor George Osborne argued that the biggest risk to an economic recovery was the re-election of a Labour government.
Osborne argued that the Liberal Democrat response to the economic crisis was "confused."
He repeated his calls for the Treasury to publish detailed spending plans.
Responding to a question on public sector cuts, Osborne explained that he believed it was right to make cuts as soon as possible.
The government, he argued, had to tackle the issue of "over expenditure quickly".
Osborne told the press that there would have to be public sector job cuts.
Even the chancellor, he said, has acknowledged that there had to be "manageable job cuts".
Commenting on today's unemployment figures, Lib Dem Treasury spokesman Vince Cable said Labour's record "speaks for itself".
"It underlines just how fragile the UK economy is and exposes the folly of Tory plans to pull the rug from under the recovery. Without a strong and concerted plan of action to support jobs and businesses, the fallout from the recession will be with us for years to come."
Work and pensions secretary Yvette Cooper said:
"There are still a lot of people who are being affected by the recession, and a lot of people who need help."
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