This month has seen further encouraging employment data with continued big rises in employment levels to record levels, combined with falling unemployment. Meanwhile economic growth figures remain poor, with the economy shrinking by 0.3% in the final quarter of 2012.

First the employment figures. Nationally the jobless figures fell by 37,000 between September and November to 2.49m, with the number of people in work rising to 29.7m. The unemployment rate fell from 7.8% to 7.7% in the three months. The growth in employment was even better than it looked at first glance with the net rise of 90,000 made up of a decline in part time working of 23,000 offset by a rise in full time employment of 113,000. The number of long term unemployed also fell (those out of work for over 2 years fell by 10,000 to 434,000). There was, however, a small (1,000) increase in youth unemployment to 957,000.

In December the seasonally adjusted national Unemployment Benefit Count (which only covers part of total unemployment as not every unemployed person claims unemployment benefit) fell by 12,100 to 1,557,100 or 4.9%. In Birmingham the seasonally adjusted figure fell to 48,590 or 10.5% while the unadjusted figure fell 613 to 48,079 or 10.4%. In Acocks Green the unadjusted figure rose by 4 in the month to 1,173, also a rate of 10.4%

The growth figures – flat over calender 2012 as a whole – are difficult to tally with the big rise in employment over the past year (552,000). Its something I’ve discussed before. There are probably a number of factors behind this paradox. One is that the growth figures may be revised up in the future. Another is that low wage rises may be encouraging private sector employers to hoard employees with skills they may need, when growth picks up. There are also structural changes going on in the economy which damage the growth figures without impacting much on employment In particular oil and gas output from the North Sea is in a long term decline. This cuts the value of economic output far more significantly than the job losses it leads to. Also the continued unwinding of the build up of loans since the financial crisis hit, leads to a fall in economic output of the City of London, with again a disproportionately small impact on jobs. So the non-oil, non-finance part of the economy is actually doing better than the overall figures imply – which on balance is a good thing.