Not of the political variety either.
The UK’s office of national statistics announced on Wednesday that the number of Britons claiming unemployment benefits fell unexpectedly in February by the biggest amount since November 1997.
As Reuters reported:
The Office for National Statistics said the number of people claiming jobless benefit fell by 32,300 in February, confounding analysts’ forecasts for a rise of 8,000. January’s rise, previously reported at 23,500, was slashed to 5,300. The claimant count rate eased to 4.9 percent, the lowest since August 2009.
Sterling reacted as follows against the euro:
Which should go some way to turning things around after last month’s sharper than expected claimant count rise.
Update 10:08 GMT – A little bit of comment from IHS Global Insight’s Howard Archer, who appears to be a touch more skeptical about Wednesday’s figures considering that employment fell by 54,000 in the three months to January and still stands at a four-year low of 38.860m. This, he says, equals a 13-year low in the employment rate of 72.3 per cent:
As he noted (his emphasis):
This indicates that the number of unemployed has been limited by people withdrawing from the labour market for the time being.
It is also evident that the labour market has been pretty resilient during the economy’s travails, with the number of people losing their jobs being limited appreciably by companies and workers being flexible in trying to avoid permanent job losses, including the use of such measures as wage freezes or pay cuts, working part time, extended unpaid leave and career breaks.
The economy’s return to modest growth in the fourth quarter of 2009 is also obviously helping matters to a limited extent.
We believe that it is premature to sound the all-clear on the jobs front. In fact, we suspect the labour market may well be somewhat erratic in the near term at least, with some months of unemployment gains and some of losses. There remains the risk that unless the economy gains significant momentum in the near term, a significant number of firms may well decide that they really cannot hold on to some of their workers any longer. In addition, significant job cuts in the public sector could well start later this year as part of the efforts to rein in government expenditure.
Related links:
UK employment *fall*/*fail* – FT Alphaville
Job stat confusion, UK edition - FT Alphaville