Unemployment in the UK fell by 121,000 to 2.12 million in the three months to May, taking it to the lowest level in nearly six years, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). <\/p>\n
The ONS also revealed that the rate fell again, from 6.6 per cent to 6.5 per cent, in the three months to April, while the number of people claiming Jobseeker\u2019s Allowance last month fell by 36,300 to 1.04 million.<\/p>\n
The figures show that more than 78 per cent of men and 68 per cent of women are in work, giving an overall employment rate of 73.1 per cent, which equals the record rate of employment set in 2005.<\/p>\n
However, growth in wages slowed again, with average wages between March and May, including bonuses, rising only 0.3 per cent from the same time a year ago, the weakest growth in five years, although average wage rises, excluding bonuses, rose in that time by 0.7 per cent, the lowest increase since 2001.<\/p>\n
A spokesman for the ONS said that May\u2019s earnings growth was still affected by comparisons with the same month last year when many firms made delayed payments of bonuses to help their employees benefit from a cut in income tax.<\/p>\n
According to the ONS, more than 4.5 million people were registered as self-employed during this time, the highest number since records began in 1992, after an increase of 404,000 over the past year.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister David Cameron hailed the figures as proof that the Government\u2019s economic plan is working but critics have warned that the continued low growth of earnings suggests that there is still a fair amount of labour market slack, with little pressure on inflation coming from pay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Unemployment in the UK fell by 121,000 to 2.12 million in the three months to May, taking it to the lowest level in nearly six years, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":340,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339\/revisions\/340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}