Jobless down, claimants up

According to the Labour Force Survey (LFS) count of unemployment, the government's preferred measure, total unemployment in the three months to September fell by 67,000 to 1.38 million.

The unemployment rate was also down at 4.6%. The LFS count includes people not eligible for benefits. There were 809,000 unemployed men (a 5.0% rate) and 570,000 women (a 4.2% rate).

However, the claimant count measure of unemployment, which only includes those actually drawing benefits, rose by 900 in the year to October to 836,700. This broke a 16-month run of falling unemployment. The unemployment rate remained at 2.7%, the lowest rate since April 1975.

The number of unemployed men on benefit rose to 623,300 (a 3.7% rate) while the number of unemployed women rose to 213,400 (a 1.5% rate).

The number of job vacancies in the three months to October fell to 640,000. There were 2.5 vacancies per 100 employee jobs, compared with 2.3 a year earlier.

Jobs in manufacturing continued to fall, down to 3.35 million in the three months to September. This was a fall of 83,000 jobs on a year earlier.

The Retail Prices Index (RPI) rose to 3.3% in the year to October, largely due to housing costs.