UK Unemployment Drops to 7.7 Percent

Official figures show Britain’s unemployment rate dropped slightly to 7.7 percent for the three-month period to August, further evidence that Europe’s third-largest economy continues to strengthen.

The Office of National Statistics said Wednesday that the number of those out of work dropped 0.1 percentage points from the three-month period through May. In total, there were 2.49 million unemployed people aged 16 and over, down 18,000 from the previous period.

The unemployment rate is now a key economic indicator for the Bank of England — under its new governor, Mark Carney, the bank has said it won’t consider raising interest rates until the jobless rate drops to 7 percent.

The bank’s main interest rate has been at a record low of 0.5 percent since March 2009. Policymakers have also refrained from adding more stimulus, after having pumped 375 billion pounds ($600 billion) into the economy through a bond-buying program.

via Mainichi

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Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza