Unemployment Falls In The First Quarter

The number of people claiming for unemployment has dropped in the first three months of 2016.

The Number of people out of work fell by 2,000 in the first the months of the year, as stated by the Office for National Statistics, ONS.

Due to this, a recorded number of people are now working. The percentage of people working is now 74.2% of the population, roughly 31.5 million people. This number was achieved by a rise of 44,000 people finding jobs.

One of the senior statisticians from the ONS, David Freeman, said that the jobs market is ‘cooling off’ and evidence of this is how the change in unemployment is only every small.

However, even though the overall number of people working in the first quarter has increased, there was a large increase of claims of unemployment in February and March, with over 14,000 people claiming, the largest total since 2011. The numbers started to decrease again in April, with a drop of 2,400, making the total non-working population 737,800.

These numbers mean that there are more people at work than ever before, and unemployment is at its lowest, at just 5.1%. This is according to sectary of state for work and pension, Stephen Crabb. He also said that a regular wage is a security that more families in the UK will have now, because more people are at work. He also says that they aren’t finished yet, as the universal credit welfare reform is making sure it is better to be at work than not.

There was a rise in average earnings as well in March. This was a rise of 2%, with an increase of 0.1% compared to February. This may be due to the time of bonus’ this year, said the ONS. Not including bonus’, the average earning increase by 2.1% in the first quarter year-on-year. However, this was a fall compared to February’s rise of 2.2%.