Jobless claimant numbers down in the UK

There was a fall in the number of people claiming unemployment benefit in November for the first time in almost two years. It seems to be a clear indication that the peak of the jobless count will be lower than that forecast when the recession was at its worst.

Those claiming Jobseeker's allowance numbered 1.63m, a fall of 6,300, the first drop since February 2008, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Despite that fall, the number of unemployed people was up by 21,000 in the three months to the end of October, reaching 2.49m, but the rise was smaller than expected. Nevertheless, it is the biggest unemployment count for over 14 years, and the unemployment rate is 7.9%.

The good news is that the climb in unemployment figures is lower than expected. One of the reasons the numbers have been kept down is that employers have frozen pay and cut working hours in a bid to limit redundancies.

Chancellor Alistair Darling was surprisingly cautious about the figures. He said that the figures werer "very encouraging", but it would be "a mistake to believe that the corner has been turned. We still think unemployment will rise next year."