UK unemployment continues to fall
The latest government unemployment figures for the three month period to July have fallen by 0.1% to 7.7%. The number of people unemployed in this period fell 24,000 to 2.487 million, while official figures also showed a concurrent fall in the number of people claiming jobseekers allowance, to 1.402 million, its lowest level since February 2009.
Prime Minister David Cameron said Britain is “turning a corner” but admits the government has “still got a long way to go” on unemployment. BBC Chief economics correspondent, Hugh Pym concurs: “In a week when the chancellor said the economy was turning a corner, here are labour market figures that strengthen the argument that the economy is moving in the right direction,”
The figures for unemployment in the three months to July are based on the Labour Force Survey, in which the Office for National Statistics speaks to 60,000 households once a quarter, making it the country’s biggest household survey.
New jobs created in the private sector continue to support growth – between March and June 2013, public sector employment fell 34,000, while private sector employment rose 114,000. “The positive figures are a measure of the resilience and the flexibility of Britain’s labour market,” said David Kern, chief economist at the British Chambers of Commerce. “The further increase in private sector employment, at a time when the public sector is still shedding jobs, demonstrates yet again that private firms are able to drive the recovery.”
Against an otherwise improving picture, youth unemployment rose slightly to 21%. In a bid to tackle youth unemployment in East Anglia, the Norfolk Chamber of Commerce has announced a joint venture with the Norwich for Jobs campaign to implement its already successful apprenticeship brokerage service. The role of the Chamber will be to lend a helping hand to businesses to help them identify the most appropriate apprenticeship scheme and training providers to meet their needs and get more young people into jobs.
Chamber CEO, Caroline Williams, commented: “We are passionate about helping to provide links between Norfolk’s young people and the business community and this is one way we feel that we can really help.”
“All this strengthens our belief that the jobs market is slowly improving. Over the last quarter we have witnessed a higher number of finance vacancies we have been asked to fill and we are therefore quietly optimistic that this trend will continue but would like to see more opportunities created for the FD market” explains Sam Holt, Director of Big Sky Additions.
