Unemployment falls yet again

Unemployment was once again down on the two official counts. Under the Labour Force Survey (LFS) count, the government's preferred measure, it fell by 48,000 to 1.41 million in the three months to March compared with the previous three months. The LFS count includes people not eligible for benefits.

The unemployment rate was down to 4.7% - the lowest since records began in 1984.

There were 829,000 unemployed men (a 5.1% rate) and 584,000 unemployed women (a 4.3% rate).

The claimant count measure of unemployment, which only takes in those actually drawing benefit, showed its 11th monthly fall in a row, dropping by 6,000 to 876,300 in April.

The rate was steady at 2.9% - still the lowest rate since June 1975.

Under this count, the number of unemployed men fell to 655,300 (a 4.0% rate) and the number of unemployed women was down to 221,000 (a 1.6% rate).

The bad news was that manufacturing employment continued to shrink. Manufacturing employee jobs fell by 101,000 - 2.9% - to 3.4 million in the three months to March compared to a year earlier.

TUC general secretary Brendan Barber expressed concern that "manufacturing workers are still losing their jobs in droves."