• Unemployment is 1,281,000, down by 25,000 from last month’s published figure (quarterly headline is down by 13,000) and the unemployment rate at 3.8%, showed no change on last month and also on last quarter.
• The ONS figure for claimant unemployed is 1,240,200, and is up by 28,800 on last month, and the claimant rate is 3.5%.
• The number of workless young people (not in employment, full-time education or training) is 974,000, and has fallen by 12,000 on the quarter, representing 14.1% of the youth population. This has fallen by 0.2 percentage points.
• Youth unemployment (including students) is 473,000, and fell by 15,000 on the quarter.
• There are 1.6 unemployed people per vacancy.
• The employment rate is 76.2% and has risen by 0.1 percentage points on last month’s published figure and showed no change in the preferred quarterly measure.

Learning and Work Institute comment

The labour market figures published on 17 December are modestly positive with a potential late Christmas present for the newly re-elected government.

Duncan Melville, chief economist at Learning and Work Institute, commented:

‘The quarterly numbers for employment and unemployment released today are good news as they are better than expected given the poor recent economic growth outturns. The growth numbers released last week indicated that the UK output was flat in the three months to October, and this follows weak growth over the first half of this year. In the quarter employment rose modestly and unemployment fell modestly by 24,000 and 13,000 respectively. Less positively, inactivity amongst people of working age rose in the quarter, particularly for long-term sick and disabled people. The workforce jobs numbers were also positive, rising by 77,000 in the three months to September. However, these numbers have been strong for the last year in contrast with the official employment numbers taken from the Labour Force Survey.

Over the last two months, employment has risen by 108,000 with the quarterly increase being pulled down by the monthly fall published in October. Once these figures drop out of the quarterly numbers next month it is likely that they will show a substantial quarterly increase in employment - providing a late Christmas present for the newly re-elected government.

Further into the future the outlook for the labour market is less clear as the level of vacancies fell again and has been falling for 10 months now. This suggests that future employment growth is unlikely to be strong. While the result of the General Election indicates that the UK will now leave the EU by the end of next month, this is not the end of Brexit related uncertainty. It is still unclear what type of economic and trading relationship the UK will have with the EU which will only be determined over the course of 2020.’

Paul Bivand, associate director for statistics and analysis at Learning and Work Institute, said:

"Early next year we are planning to revise these briefings. The move to Universal Credit has meant that the level and depth of information on benefit claimants has reduced dramatically, and has meant that some of our regular analysis has become more difficult to interpret.

Comments and suggestions for coverage are welcome via my email (paul.bivand@learningandwork.org.uk). Benefits statistics in particular are quarterly in large part (some less frequent) so these sections are likely to move to quarterly analysis."

Employment increased by 24,000 between May to July 2019 and August to October 2019. In the last 12 months employment rose by 309,000.

Unemployment fell by 13,000 between May to July 2019 and August to October 2019. and the unemployment rate showed no change at 3.8% in the quarter the lowest level since 1975.

Economic inactivity increased by 19,000 between May to July 2019 and August to October 2019. and the inactivity rate showed no change at 20.8% in the quarter. Within economic inactivity, the number of long-term sick and disabled people has been rising, while the number looking after their family has been falling. Over the last six months, the lines have decisively crossed, and there are now 105,000 more economically inactive people who are long term sick or disabled than there are looking after their family.

Local area unemployment figures come from the claimant count of benefit claimants. The national claimant count rose by 28,800. This takes account of normal seasonal effects but adjusted figures are not published for local areas. The actual number of claimants, nationally, is up by 25,600 in the month to November. Therefore, it should not be surprising that figures for local areas will also show rises.

Youth unemployment is showing a quarterly fall. There are still 473,000 unemployed young people, and 346,000, (5.0% of the youth population) who are unemployed and not in full-time education.

The proportion of unemployed young people (not counting students) who are not claiming Universal Credit or Jobseeker’s Allowance, and therefore are not receiving official help with job search, is now 35.3%.

A total of 55,000 were counted as in employment while on ‘government employment and training programmes’, where the Office for National Statistics continues to count employment programme participants as ‘in employment’ by default. This number increased by 3,000 this quarter. Self-employment rose by 33,000 this quarter. The number of employees is down by 11,000 in the quarter. Involuntary part-time employment fell by 16,000 this quarter to 0.9 million, 10.4% of all part-time workers.The proportion remains much higher than the 7.4% in 2004.

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