UK Unemployment Falls to Six Year Low

October 15, 2014 Share Print 0

The UK unemployment total has fallen below two million for the first time in almost six years, official figures show.

The number of jobless people fell by 154,000 to 1.97 million in the three months to the end of August, the Office for National Statistics said.

The drop, which is bigger than analysts expected, took the unemployment rate to 6%, its lowest level since late 2008.

The employment rate is now 73%, close to its all-time high of 73.2%.

Chancellor George Osborne said the fall in unemployment was “evidence that our long-term economic plan is working”.

“I’m the first to say there are still too many people out of work. We need to make further reforms to our welfare system so that people have a life of work, rather than a life on the dole,” he added.

via BBC

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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.