Unemployment falls again

Unemployment has gone down marginally, according to official figures.

According to the latest Labour Force Survey (LFS) count, it fell by 1,000 to 1,493,000 in the three months to July, compared with the previous three months. The LFS figure includes people not eligible for benefit and is the government's preferred measure.

The unemployment rate was 5.1% - unchanged from the previous quarter. There were 894,000 unemployed men (a 5.6% rate) and 599,000 women (a 4.5% rate).

The claimant count fell to its lowest level since September 1975. It was down by 6,900 to 930,800 - an unemployment rate of 3.1% of the workforce.

The number of male claimants fell to 698,500 (a 4.3% rate) and the number of female claimants fell to 232,300 (a 1.7% rate).

The number of vacancies in the three months to August was 602,700 - down 22,000 on the same period a year earlier. The gap between vacancies and the claimant count was down to 328,100.

Manufacturing continued to haemorrhage jobs - down by 3.5% on a year earlier to 3.5 million. This is the lowest level since comparable records began in 1984.

However, the overall size of the UK workforce continued its steady rise to a record high of 27.93 million.