Ministers are generally cautious in welcoming falls in unemployment in case they represent a blip for just one quarter. But Iain Duncan Smith was pretty chipper this morning when the Office for National Statistics announced a fall in the jobless stats for the fifth quarter running and the strongest employment rise since the middle of 2010. In the three months to June 2012, 29 million people were in work, up by 201,000 on the previous quarter.
The employment rate rose by 0.4 per cent to 71 per cent, and there are 4,000 fewer unemployed young people. The number of unemployed people fell by 46,000 to 2.56 million.
As the graph below for changes in employment level by sector up to the first quarter of this year shows, the private sector is showing a strong recovery as the public sector contracts. The ONS has since made some changes to the way it calculates the data per sector, which makes the Q2 figures a new set.
If you focus merely on the change by sector since the formation of the coalition government, you can see how dramatic the shift has been:
Duncan Smith appeared on Sky News within a few minutes of the ONS announcement to say:
The employment rate rose by 0.4 per cent to 71 per cent, and there are 4,000 fewer unemployed young people. The number of unemployed people fell by 46,000 to 2.56 million.
As the graph below for changes in employment level by sector up to the first quarter of this year shows, the private sector is showing a strong recovery as the public sector contracts. The ONS has since made some changes to the way it calculates the data per sector, which makes the Q2 figures a new set.
If you focus merely on the change by sector since the formation of the coalition government, you can see how dramatic the shift has been:
Duncan Smith appeared on Sky News within a few minutes of the ONS announcement to say:
‘It’s not just over the last few months, the last couple of quarters, you take it from 2010 the private sector has created nigh on a million new job against a backdrop of difficulty.
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