UK unemployment fell by 88,000 in the period February to April to 2.43 million.
On the face of it this appears to be good news, especially as it was the biggest drop since summer 2000.
However, it masks another truth: that the number of claimants of Jobseeker’s Allowance was up by 19,600 to 1.49 million. Not all good news, then.
The official unemployment figure is – interestingly – based only on a survey, and has been diverging from the jobseeker number for a number of months.
Unsurprisingly earnings growth slowed down during the same three month period, with earnings rising by only an annual rate 2%. At a time when the latest inflation figure was 4.5% (May), this emphasis the hard times Brits are going through right now.
Whether mass strikes by 750,000 public sector workers potentially coming up will help this situation is debatable (and the reasons are not for earnings or job losses), but it is easy to see why frustrations are rising.
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