Employment at record levels

Latest employment figures from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) released yesterday show that the number of people in work in Britain has passed 32 million while the number of people available for work but unable to find it has dropped below 1.5 million.

Employment has grown by 324,000 over the 12 months to March 2017, taking the employment rate for people of working age up to 74.9% which is the highest since records began in 1971 while the number of people seeking work has dropped by 152,000 in 12 months while the unemployment rate dropped from 4.9% to 4.5% over the same period and is now as low on a comparable basis as it has been since the mid 1970's.

Employment has risen in every region and nation of the UK since 2010.

The increase was driven by increases in full-time jobs, not part time ones, and the number of both men and women in work has risen, with the largest increase being of women in full-time jobs.

There has also been an improvement in the employment rate for young people. The unemployment rate for 16 to 24-year-olds was 12.5%, lower than for a year earlier when it was 13.5%, and well below its highest rate of 22.5% in late 2011.

This is excellent news on jobs but no grounds for complacency: we also need to get productivity up so that employers can afford not just to employ more people but to do so at better salaries.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria

Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the
Read more

Quotes of the day 19th August 2020

Image
"Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise."  ( Cato the Elder , who lived 234 BC - 149 BC, quoted in "Lives" by Plutarch.) There is a similar saying by Germany's Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck: Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have put the same saying in a more humorous form: "Wise men profit by the mistakes of others, while fools will not learn even from their own blunders." See also this thread on the "Quote Investigator" website . Let us all be wise and learn from the events of the last few days.
Read more

Quote of the day 24th July 2020

I was moved to put the passage below forward as a quote today when I saw a horrible post on twitter from someone writing that it was "excellent" that someone who took a different view from her about Brexit had died. I won't write which way round it was so that all the Remain supporters can assume the post was from a Brexit fanatic welcoming the death of a remainer and all the Leavers can assume it was a Remainiac welcoming one less Brexiteer. There's been plenty of nasty stuff on both sides but if you catch anyone of your own viewpoint  posting something like that who might listen to you, please do call them out on it - and point out that they're giving everyone on your side of the argument a bad name. Anyway, here's the quote from John Donne.
Read more