Jobless total falls to two-year low

Unemployment fell to a two-year low in the second quarter of the year, according to official figures.

According to the Labour Force Survey (LFS) the average figure for the three months to June was 1,458,000. This is the government's preferred measure and includes people not eligible for benefit.

The unemployment rate was steady at 5.0%. There were 879,000 unemployed men (a 5.5% rate) and 579,000 women (4.3%).

The claimant count fell by 8,800 to 939,200 - an unemployment rate of 3.1% of the workforce.

The number of male claimants fell to 705,600 (4.3%) and the number of female claimants fell to 233,600 (1.7%).

The number of vacancies in the three months to July was 605,100. Putting the gap between vacancies and the claimant count at 334,100.

Manufacturing jobs were down by 3.6% on a year earlier at 3.5 million.

TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: "The historic performance of the labour market under the current government is being over-shadowed by the failure to regenerate the manufacturing sector.

"Industry is losing thousands of skilled workers due to global competition. This will continue until the government takes bolder steps towards building a business environment in which the UK competes on quality and innovation, rather than purely cost."