Manufacturing sector suffers again

The constant decline in manufacturing jobs continues with 79,000 jobs lost in the three months to April compared to the same period a year ago.

Employment in the sector now stands at 3.22 million - the lowest level since comparable records began in 1978.

Meanwhile, unemployment under the Labour Force Survey (LFS) count fell by 15,000 to 1.4 million in the three months to April compared with the previous quarter. The LFS count is the government's preferred measure and includes people not eligible for benefits.

This represented an unemployment rate of 4.7% - unchanged on the previous quarter.

There were 821,000 unemployed men (a 5.1% rate) and 574,000 women (a 4.2% rate).

The claimant count of unemployed, which only includes those drawing jobseekers' allowance, rose for the fourth consecutive month to 855,300 in May.

The unemployment rate under this count was 2.7%.

The number of unemployed men on benefit rose to 636,000 (a 3.7% rate).

The number of unemployed women rose to 219,300 (a 1.5% rate).

The number of vacancies fell to 635,900 in the three months ending May.

However, the vacancy ratio was steady at 2.4 vacancies for every 100 jobs.