Reports today have revealed that unemployment has fallen by 45,000 between the first three months of this year according to the Office for National Statistics. The number of people claiming JSA fell by 13,700 to 1.50 million in April despite economist’s projections that the UK has fallen back into a recession.
Chris Grayling, Minister for Employment welcomed the news stating that it was a “welcome step in the right direction”
Clearly though there is still a long way to go before the government can claim any victory over employment rates. Although youth unemployment has also fallen to 1.02 million, the ONS have also shown that the number of people who remained unemployed for over a year has increased by 27,000 to 887,000 – the worst since the Tories were last in power in 1996. The number of people unemployed 5,000 to 428,000.
Grayling continued; “For a number of months now, employment has been growing and this is starting to feed through into improving unemployment figures. However, we still face significant international uncertainty so we need to fold firm on our current economic strategy and continue to do everything we can to ensure unemployment continues to fall”
These figures have been bolstered by an improvement in private sector hire, which has picked up considerably in the last quarter.






