This month, UK unemployment has seen the largest annual fall since records began over 40 years ago. The number of people who are unemployed in the UK has fallen below 2 million for the first time since 2008, making it the largest annual fall since the 1970s.
Just one year ago the rate of unemployment was 7.7%, however, it is now at 6%. Over this past year, every single region and nation in the UK has seen a fall in unemployment. This has lead to a record number of people being in work – 30.76 million people are currently employed in the UK.
If we discount those who are in full-time education, there are now just 468,000 unemployed young people in the UK. This is down by nearly a third compared to last year and is even lower than just before the recession. There are fewer young JSA claimants than at any time in two generations after the number dropped by 123,000 in the past year.
It’s not only young people who are experiencing higher levels of employment, there are record numbers of women in work, with the UK having seen the fastest growth in the number of women in work in the last year out of all G7 economies. When compared to other G7 countries, the UK has seen the largest growth in employment and the largest fall in unemployment over the past year.
The number of job vacancies in the UK has also risen substantially. There have been 130,000 job vacancies created over the past year, which brings the total number of vacancies in the UK economy to 674,000. So what better time than now to get your foot on the career ladder or take the next step up!
