Acocks Green’s Claimant Unemployment fell by 3 to 679 in January. This is a fall of 288 over the past year, reducing the claimant rate from 7.4% to 5.2% in that time. The level of long term unemployment fell by 5 to 255 and the number of youth claimants also fell by 5 to 145. These are unadjusted figures, which normally rise in January, so a fall, however modest, is an impressive outcome for the month.

Across the UK, the seasonally adjusted claimant level fell by 38,600 in January, to stand at 823,000 or 2.6%. Meanwhile, the total unemployment level fell by 97,000 to 1.86m in the three months to December. This represents 5.7% of the working age population. However, youth unemployment remained static in the last quarter. Total employment reached a record 30.9m, up 608,000 on the year, which represents an employment rate of 73.2% – the highest in over a decade. Long term unemployment fell by 210,000 in the past year, to 638,000.