Jobless count posts mid-year fall

The latest unemployment figures show the biggest fall for three years.

Under the Labour Force Survey count, unemployment was down by 49,000 to 2.46 million in the quarter to June.

The fall impacted on the unemployment rate which was down to 7.8% from 8.0%; and there were only five unemployed people for every vacancy against 5.3 people the previous quarter.

Dave Prentis, general secretary of the public services union UNISON, said the fall “shows that the Labour government’s economic life support plan was beginning to work”.

However, he said that the figures were of little comfort — both “to the millions of people still locked out of the jobs market”, and to “the hundreds of thousands of public sector workers faced with losing their jobs” as a result of the coalition government’s spending cuts.

Meanwhile, the TUC has voiced concerns about the high rate of unemployment among young workers.

The other official barometer of joblessness — the claimant count, which only takes into account those claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance — showed a fall to stand at 1.46 million in July.