Jobs boom points to ‘bright future’ out of the EU for Britain
RECORD employment and the lowest jobless figures for a decade have defied Remain campaigners’ warnings of economic doom after the vote for Brexit.
Vacancies also reached new highs with more than 750,000 jobs on offer from employers, said the Office for National Statistics.
The strong employment figures saw the pound rise to its highest against the euro since February.
The findings came the day after the Commons Public Administration Committee chided former chancellor George Osborne for using Treasury resources to claim a Leave vote would wreak economic havoc during last year’s EU referendum campaign.
Pro-Leave Labour MP and committee member Kate Hoey said: “Once again all the gloom merchants of Brexit have been shown to be wrong.
“Our country has a really bright future. But we all need to focus on getting a good exit from the EU which allows us to go full steam ahead with trade with all the countries around the world which aren’t in the EU.”
The ONS’s monthly bulletin showed UK unemployment fell by 45,000 to 1.56 million in the three months to February, compared with the periods between September and November last year.
The jobless total fell to its lowest since the end of 2006 and was 141,000 below this time last year.
The percentage of the workingage population out of a job stood at 4.7 per cent – a level last seen in 1975 – compared with 4.8 per cent in September to November 2016.
The number of people in work continued to increase – up by 39,000 to 31.84 million. It means 74.6 per cent of the workforce are in jobs, the joint highest rate since records began in 1971 and up 0.1 per cent on the previous three months. Vacancies rose 16,000 to a record 767,000, while the number of people in full-time jobs grew by 146,000. But the number classed as self-employed rose 17,000 to 4.78 million – a near-record high of 15 per cent of everyone in work.
Work and Pensions Secretary Damian Green said: “This is yet another strong set of figures, with unemployment at a rate that hasn’t been beaten since the 1970s and more vacancies than ever before.
“More people are finding fulltime jobs and average wages have grown yet again, meaning more families have the security of a regular wage.”
Wage trends, however, suggest pay is once more lagging behind the cost of living.
Average earnings increased 2.2 per cent in the year to February, while the ONS earlier reported that Consumer Price Index inflation was 2.3 per cent in March.
ONS statistician David Freeman said figures “point to continued strength in the labour market. However, higher inflation, coupled with subdued earnings increases, means that the real growth rate in pay has tailed off to just above zero.”