Claimant count shows rise in jobless

Unemployment under the claimant count, which only includes those drawing jobseekers' allowance, rose for the fifth consecutive month to 864,900 in June.

The unemployment rate under this count has risen from 2.6% in February to 2.8% in June.

The number of unemployed men on benefit rose to 643,300 (a 3.8% rate), and the number of unemployed women rose to 221,600 (a 1.6% rate).

In contrast, unemployment under the Labour Force Survey (LFS) count fell. This is the government's preferred measure and includes people not eligible for benefits.

The count was down by 4,000 to 1.4 million in the three months to May compared with the previous quarter.

The unemployment rate of 4.8% was unchanged on the previous quarter.

There were 838,000 unemployed men (a 5.2% rate) and 588,000 women (a 4.3% rate).

Official figure on redundancies show there were 126,000 in the three months to May, down 10,000 on the previous quarter.

The manufacturing sector continued to shrink with employment levels down to 3.2 million - 81,000 or 2.5% down on a year ago.

Earnings growth in manufacturing showed a fall in May to just 1.9%, while in the economy as a whole there was a 4.2% rise.