Jobless rate best since 1975

Unemployment was down on the two official counts, according to the latest figures.

Under the Labour Force Survey (LFS) count, the government's preferred measure, it was down by 29,000 to 1.46 million in the three months to November compared with the previous three months. The LFS count includes people not eligible for benefits.

The rate of unemployment on that measure was down to 4.9% from 5.0%. There were 879,000 unemployed men (a 5.5% rate) and 582,000 unemployed women (a 4.3% rate).

The other official measure, the claimant count, which only takes in those actually drawing benefit, showed its seventh monthly fall in a row, dropping by 8,300 in December to 908,200.

The jobless rate under the claimant count remained steady at 3.0% - the best since June 1975.

The number of unemployed men fell to 678,800 (a 4.1% rate) and the number of unemployed women was down to 229,400 (a 1.6% rate).

On the employment side, manufacturing continued to shed jobs. The sector lost 116,000 jobs compared to a year ago, with the number of people employed in the sector down to 3.47 million in the three months to November.