Fall In Unemployment In January

The unemployment rate fell by 0.1 to 7.8% in the quarter to January 2010 and the number of unemployed people fell by 33,000 to 2.45m. It is the first quarterly fall in the unemployment rate since May 2008 and the biggest fall in the number of unemployed since July 2007. The number of long-term unemployed increased however by 61,000 to 687,000 the biggest number since the three months to August 1997. The number of unemployed men and women both fell in the quarter, men by 20,000 to 1.51m and women by 13,000 to 938,000. The claimant count in February 2010 was down 32,300 to 1.59m or 4.9%.

The employment rate was 77% and the number of people in employment fell by 54,000 to 28.86m. The number of employees and self-employed people working part-time becuase they could not find a full time job increased 20,000 over the quarter. The working age employment rate was 72.2% down 0.3% on the previous quarter and 1.8% on the year. For men of working age the employment rate was 75% and women 69.2%. Full-time employment fell to 21.16m and part-time was unchanged at 7.7m. The public sector employed 6.1m and the private sector 22.76m.

There were 30.75m workforce jobs in December 2009 a decrease of 119,000 over the quarter and 533,00 over the year. The largest decrease over the quarter was in distribution, hotels and restaurants where the number of jobs fell by 62,000. There were 480,000 vacancies and 1.8 vacancies per 100 employee jobs.

The total number of hours worked per week in the three months to January 2010 fell 4.6m to 908.2m and the average weekly hours worked over the same period was down 0.1 to 31.5. Productivity was 3.1% lower than a year ago and wage costs increased by 4.1%. The working age inactivity rate was 21.5% up 0.4% and the number of economically inactive people of working age was up by 149,000 over the quarter and 371,000 over the year to 8.16m. The inactivity was increased mainly by the 2.31m students not in the labour market, an increase of 93,000 on the quarter.

Average total weekly earnings was £442/week including bonuses in January 2010 and average regular pay excluding bonuses was £426/week. Total pay increased by 0.9% and regular pay by 1.4% in January. Private sector pay was £426/week and excluding bonuses was £416/week. Private sector total pay was unchanged on last year and regular pay rose by 0.4%. Public sector average total pay was £461/week and regular pay was £457/week in January 2010. Public sector total pay went up by 3.8% and regular 4%.

Nine stoppages cost 4,000 working days in January. In the year to January the figure was 451,000 working days from 100 stoppages. The number of redundancies decreased by 22,000 to 168,000 that is a rate of 6.7 per 1000 employees down by 0.9% on the previous qaurter and 4.1% on the year.