Unemployment shrinks again

Unemployment continues to fall on both official counts. Under the Labour Force Survey (LFS) count, the government's preferred measure, it was down by 9,000 to 1.43 million in the three months to April compared with the previous three months.

The LFS count includes people not eligible for benefits.

The unemployment rate was 4.8%. There were 839,000 unemployed men (5.2%) and 588,000 unemployed women (4.3%).

A regional breakdown shows five of the 12 regions had an unemployment rate above the 4.8% UK average. London had a 6.9% rate, Scotland 5.9%, the West Midlands 5.5% and the North East and Northern Ireland 5.2%.

The claimant count measure of unemployment, which only takes in those actually drawing benefit, showed its 12th monthly fall in a row, dropping by 12,000 to 862,000 in May - the best figure since August 1975. The rate under this count was down to 2.8% - the lowest rate since May 1975. The number of unemployed men on benefit fell to 642,500 (a 3.8% rate) while the number of women was down to 219,500 (a 1.5% rate).

Jobs in manufacturing continued to fall - down by 108,000 to 3.38 million in the three months to April on a year earlier, the lowest figure since records began in 1978.