Unemployment nears Bank target

The unemployment rate is almost at the target at which the Bank of England may consider an interest rate rise.

Under the Labour Force Survey count, the unemployment rate fell to 7.1% in the three months ending November 2013 from 7.7% in the previous three-month period.

Last August, Bank of England governor Mark Carney set an unemployment rate of 7.0% when the Bank would start to consider raising interest rates from the record low of 0.5% they have been at since March 2009.

In numerical terms, unemployment was down by 167,000 to 2.32 million. A 106,000 fall to 1.31 million in the number of unemployed men saw their unemployment rate fall to 7.5% from 8.2%. The number of unemployed women was down by 61,000 to 1.01 million and their unemployment rate fell to 6.7% from 7.1%.

On the other main jobless measure — the claimant count which only includes those on Jobseeker’s Allowance — unemployment fell by 24,000 to over 1.25 million in December 2013.

The number of male claimants fell by 18,700 to 805,600, and their joblessness rate was down to 4.5% from 4.6%.

The number of women claimants fell by only 5,300 to 441,400. Their joblessness rate fell to 2.8% from 2.9% in November.

www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_347785.pdf