UK’s unemployment increases reflected by a 5% increase and was claimed to be the highest in the last 4 years.
Marking only 3 weeks to the Chancellor’s tax & spending statement, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) disclosed that headline unemployment had risen by 5% during the 3 months until September, reflecting a 0.2% increase from the previous quarter.
City economists forecast a 4.9% increase, according to Pantheon Macroeconomics. Quantum-wise, this percentage is reflected in an unemployment increase of 1.8 million. The last time we saw such a high unemployment rate was during the Covid pandemic in January 2021.
Experts claim that wage growth has reached its lowest point since April 2022, three years ago.
Unemployment was registering a post-pandemic high. Its increased value in the last quarter reflects a post-pandemic high.
Earnings are yet claimed to be outstripping inflation, although it’s by a small margin. Real wages are claimed to be 0.8% higher after taking intoaccount the Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation, which has declined from 0.9% sustained in the previous 3 months.
Reinstating the prevalence of a rather tough job market that exists, ONS said that the quantum of workers on UK payrolls declined by 32,000 during October to 30.3 million, following a similar quantum decline during the previous month. Revised data reflects declines during most of the previous 12 months.
ONS director of economic statistics Liz McKeown had said that if considered together, these figures point towards a weakening labour market.
On the brighter side, there was one positive note in the data, with vacancies increasing by 2,000, or 0.2%, to 723,000 in the three months leading up to October.
The Economic Director of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales – Suren Thiru – was quoted as having said that the UK’s labour market was moving through pre-budget jitters!
