Jonathan was delighted by the Department for Work and Pensions' recently published Labour Market Figures, which shows hugely promising employment statistics in the Woking constituency.
- Woking's employment rate of nearly 82% outstrips the national average of 75.7%
- Woking's unemployment rate, at 4.2%, remains at its lowest since 1975.
- Woking’s economically active in-employment total of 51,100 represents 81.7% of the population.
Jonathan commented 'I am delighted by the latest employment figures. They show Woking, Surrey and the rest of the U.K. with record low youth unemployment and also some of the highest figures for those in work ever seen. In my opinion, the Government should do everything it can to put our country’s finances in even better shape and to maintain a highly competitive free market economy in order to sustain this remarkable national success story on employment. In the meantime, I congratulate all Woking businesses who have been successful enough to need to take on more staff over the past few months.”
Key National statistics
- Employment: 32.40 million (up 261,000 over the last year and up by 3.35 million since 2010).
- Employment rate: 75.5 per cent (up 0.2 points over the past year and up 5.3 points since 2010).
- Unemployment: 1.36 million (down 95,000 over the past year and down by 1.14 million since 2010).
- Unemployment rate: 4.0 per cent (down 0.3 points over the past year and down 3.9 points since 2010) – the lowest since 1975.
- Wages: Average weekly earnings for employees increased by 0.4 per cent in real terms excluding bonuses, compared with a year earlier. With wages rising faster than prices, this means more people have more money in their pockets.
- Youth unemployment: There are over 451,000 fewer young people out of work since 2010 and the proportion of young people who are unemployed and not in full time education is at a record low of 4.6 per cent.
Other useful statistics:
- Wages are rising faster than prices – this is good news, but there is more to do. In the last year, regular pay (excluding bonuses) for employees in Great Britain increased by 0.4 percentage points ahead of inflation.
- The rate of employment is 75.5 per cent, up by 5.3 points since 2010, meaning more people have the security of a regular pay packet.
- The unemployment rate is 4.0 per cent – the lowest since 1975.
- The number of workless households is 3.0 million, or 14.3 per cent of all households (down 964,000 and 4.9 points since 2010).
- Almost 600,000 disabled people have entered work over a four year period (between Q2 2013 and Q2 2017).
- The employment rate among ethnic minority groups is now at a record high of 65.5 per cent, with 487,000 more people from BME backgrounds in work since 2015. This is 73 per cent of the way towards our target to increase the level of BME employment by 20 per cent by 2020.
- Vacancies are at a record 833,000 in the three months to August 2018, up 44,000 on the previous year and up by 367,000 since 2010.
- The number of people working full time is 23.86 million – a joint record high and up by 2.64 million since 2010.
- There are now over 1.6 million more women in work since 2010.
- Youth unemployment has fallen by 48.0 per cent since 2010.
- The UK has the third highest employment rate in the G7.
