The government has welcomed news that there has been an overall fall in the number of unemployed people within the UK.
The total number of people without a job in the UK fell by 45,000 over the last quarter to March, to a total of 2.6 million, while the number of people claiming jobseeker’s allowance in April was down by a further 13,700.
The fall was matched by an increase in people being employed, which saw 105,000 people find new jobs and credit was given to the increasing availability of online job sites and jobs advertised online. Over 30 million people are now in employment, though eight million of these are in part time positions, a sector that saw the biggest increase over the last quarter.
Speaking about the figures, Prime Minister David Cameron said: “It’s welcome that we have had the largest rise in employment for over a year, the number of people in work since the last election is up by 370,000, private sector jobs are up by 600,000.
“We are not remotely complacent about this because although there is good news about youth unemployment and the claimant count coming down, there is still too many people in part-time work who want full-time work, and also we still have the challenge of tackling long-term unemployment.”
It was not all good news however as the Office for National Statistics highlighted that the number of people unemployed for a year or longer is at its worst level since 1996.
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