UK unemployment rate at lowest level for years

The UK unemployment rate has fallen by 29,000 to the lowest level since 1984, according to the Office of National Statistics (ONS).

The three months ending in November 2003 showed no change in the working age employment rate but registered a fall in the unemployment rate to 4.9% - or 1.46 million people. The survey found that 14,000 fewer men and 15,000 fewer women were unemployed compared with the previous three months.

The ONS said that this was the joint lowest unemployment rate since records began in 1984 - the other occasion being March to May 2001.

The labour market trend assessments this month show that the employment rate is nearly flat, while the unemployment rate continued to fall. The trend in the claimant count also fell, while earnings growth remained moderate.

The claimant count fell to 908,200, 3%, in December - the lowest claimant count level since September 1975. The last time it was lower was in June 1975, when it was 2.8%.

The employment rate for people of working age was 74.6%, unchanged from the previous three months. The number of people in employment rose 41,000 over the previous three months to 28.15 million.

The average number of job vacancies for the three months to December was 616,000. This was 9,500 more than a year earlier.

Elsewhere, the Lib Dems have claimed that around 759,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost since Labour came to power, citing House of Commons library figures commissioned by the party.

These shocking official figures are released as the Office for National Statistics publish their monthly employment figures.

Liberal Democrat Shadow Minister for Work, Paul Holmes, said that the manufacturing sector was "sinking fast" while the government "sits idly by".

He added: "The government seems to have given up the fight to save manufacturing jobs and has left in the lurch the families dependent on those jobs to survive.

"Claims of record employment levels cannot mask the continuing decline in the manufacturing sector."

According to figures released by the ONS, manufacturing output rose by 0.1% in the three months to November compared with the three months to August. Whereas, overall production fell by 0.3% on a three-monthly basis.

Transport equipment industries and chemicals industries showed the biggest gains while basic metals industries' output fell by 1.8%.

Amicus General Secretary, Derek Simpson, has warned government that the decline of manufacturing "must be stopped, for the sake of our industrial heartlands".

Addressing a United Craft Sectors Conference in Scarborough, Mr Simpson said that the decline of the UK's manufacturing sector was reaching a "critical point". He warned that entire communities in industrial heartlands in Yorkshire, Lancashire, the Midlands and North East could be threatened if the decline were not reversed.

Mr Simpson said: "An average of 2,500 jobs manufacturing are jobs are lost every week in the UK and this situation just isn't sustainable.

"These figures are a tragedy for the skilled workers thrown on to the scrap heap or forced to take menial and low paid jobs to support their families and bad news for the whole UK economy. No other economic sector offers the skills training, employment and export opportunities that manufacturing does."

A recent Amicus survey has claimed that more than half of the UK's top 100 manufacturing employers expected to make redundancies this year.

(gmcg)