| Job vacancies hit new record |
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| Wednesday, 19 March 2008 | |
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The trend in the employment rate is increasing but unemployment and inactivity rates are falling.
There has been a further fall in the number of people claiming Jobseeker's Allowance benefit. The number of job vacancies has increased. Growth in average earnings, excluding bonuses, is unchanged, but earnings growth including bonuses has fallen. The employment rate for people of working age was 74.8 per cent for the three months to January 2008, up 0.3 from the previous quarter and up 0.4 over the year. The number of people in employment for the three months to January 2008 was 29.46 million. This is the highest figure since comparable records began in 1971 and is up 166,000 over the quarter and up 367,000 over the year. Although employment has increased over the quarter, total hours worked has fallen by 2.6 million to reach 937.3 million due to a fall in average actual hours worked. The number of jobs in December 2007 was 31.62 million, up 13,000 on the quarter and up 208,000 over the year. This is the highest figure since comparable records began in 1959. The unemployment rate was 5.2 per cent for the three months to January 2008, down 0.1 over the previous quarter and down 0.3 over the year. The number of unemployed people decreased by 32,000 over the quarter and by 89,000 over the year, to reach 1.61 million. The quarterly fall in unemployment mainly occurred among 16 to 17-year-olds. The claimant count was 793,500 in February 2008, down 2,800 over the previous month and down 126,500 over the year. This is the lowest figure since June 1975. The claimant count has now fallen for 17 consecutive months. The inactivity rate for people of working age was 21.0 per cent for the three months to January 2008, down 0.2 over the previous quarter and down 0.1 over the year. The number of economically inactive people of working age decreased by 68,000 over the quarter and by 2,000 over the year to reach 7.89 million. The number of economically inactive students has reached a record high of 1.95 million while the number of economically inactive people looking after the family or home has reached a record low of 2.24 million. The annual rate of growth in average earnings (the AEI) excluding bonuses was 3.7 per cent in January 2008, unchanged from the previous month. Including bonuses it was also 3.7 per cent, down 0.1 from the previous month. There were 678,500 job vacancies for the three months to February 2008. This is the highest figure since comparable records began in 2001 and is up 1,600 over the previous quarter and up 59,700 over the year. The redundancy rate for the three months to January 2008 was 4.4 per 1,000 employees, down 0.9 over the quarter and down 1.1 over the year. Public sector employment increased by 7,000 (seasonally adjusted) in the fourth quarter of 2007 to 5.778 million. This includes employment in Northern Rock following its reclassification to the public sector effective from 9 October 2007. The number of employees in the Civil Service decreased by 3,000. Employment in the private sector increased by 159,000 in the fourth quarter. This compares with the increase of 7,000 in the public sector. John Philpott, chief economist at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), said that on closer examination the ONS figures provided two quite different accounts of the overall strength of the UK employment market at the turn of the year. He believes that the modest rise in jobs as measured by the Workforce Jobs series – which is largely based on a survey of employers, rather than households as in the case of the Labour Force Survey – painted a picture of the current UK jobs scene that was far more in keeping with what employers had been telling the CIPD and other independent monitors. With the impact of the credit crunch intensifying and jobs in finance taking a big hit this important source of job generation will dry up in 2008. Philpott explained that all the forward looking independent employment surveys now suggested that demand for staff in the economy as a whole would be lower this year than at any time for a decade. "There may be no sign of this in the official headline employment figures but dig deeper and job prospects can be seen to have weakened. Public sector pay growth accelerates as public sector employment stays on downward trend," he added. He said that a particularly noteworthy feature of the latest ONS statistics was the degree to which the rate of growth in public sector pay caught up with that in the private sector in 2007. In January last year private sector earnings were growing at an annual rate of 4.5 per cent (including bonuses) and 3.7 per cent (excluding bonuses). The equivalent increases in the public sector were 3.2 per cent and 3.0 per cent. By January this year, however, the gap in earnings growth excluding bonuses had all but disappeared (still 3.7 per cent in the private sector but up to 3.6 per cent in the public sector) while the gap including bonuses was down to 3.8 per cent-3.5 per cent). “Though government ministers talk tough on public sector pay and public sector unions claim they are being given a raw deal the latest pay trends indicate that public servants aren’t actually doing that much worse at present than other groups of workers. Whether this will persuade an increasingly cash strapped Chancellor to take an even tighter grip on public sector pay settlements remains to be seen," Philpott concluded. Related articles
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