Labour market statistics – January 2017

1. Unemployment is 1,604,000, down 12,000 from last month’s published figure (quarterly headline down 52,000) and the unemployment rate is 4.8%, no change on last month.
2. The number of claimant unemployed is 797,800, down 10,100 on last month, and the claimant rate is 2.3%.
3. The number of workless young people (not in employment, full-time education or training) is 1,014,000, down 5,000 on the quarter, representing 14.1% of the youth population (down 0.1 percentage points).
4. There are 2.1 unemployed people per vacancy.
5. The employment rate is 74.5% (up 0.1 percentage points on last month’s published figure and down 0.1 percentage points in the preferred quarterly measure).

The latest Treasury survey of independent forecasters, showed that their current expectation is for modest economic growth of 1.4% and modest employment growth of just 0.2% in 2017.